SHNAYNU You Are My World
by NaniWise
Summary: FINAL DRAFT. MEISTER AU. Book I. Wonderland suffered tragedy. The entire royal family was slain in a single night by the most wicked of villains, the great Malady. It is a honest case, but when a familiar face enters the scene, even the Malady realizes that not all is as it seems.
1. CHAPTER I PART I

SHNAYNU

Prologue

Once upon the eve of a spring sunday, once upon the middle of a lukewarm March;

Gold light was not unfamiliar in the late evening, a cloudless sky vast and a vast landscape breathtaking with every breath sweet and pure, an air distant from the black smoke and sickly sweet fumes of the quickly changing world.

Their dear mother had yet to regret distancing herself and her children from the noisy and crowded city once. She was strong in that way, never letting the opinions of her family and friends sway her from the path she knew to be right.

The cliff in front of their old country house was lined with sturdy wooden fence for safety but they had grown tall enough to see over it when they stood on their toes and careful enough not to get splinters.

From the cliff side, they would view the valley, all the pine trees that grew along its body like a never ending sea of moss and the small city in the center of it all where little people lived their lives like little ants in the ant farm they made for school.

Ants were attracted to sugar water like humans were to greed and just a few hundred steps back made one see just how small they could be.

They were once thrilled by the idea of the woods that surrounded their home.

They quickly learned that the land had been bought by wealthy men who wished to chain down the world with iron railroads. All the wolves had been killed off, all the treasures dug up.

Uncertainty made up their dreams but it was funny how uncertainty was a friend to children like them but the worst nemesis to adults. But because the passage of time was cruel and all things lucky would grow into adulthood, the battles were fought fair and square and the adults won the war and the dreams were chased away to a distant sunrise.

The world now sought growth and change and at no steady pace. No one was going to wait for those too slow to catch up. This was no longer a world for children but a world for the anxious and wary.

But one thing the modern youth, in all their colleges and academies; in all their textbooks and ancient scrolls; could not seem to wrap their heads around was that the world was round and that no matter how fast they ran and pushed the circuits of the earth to exhaustion, they could never sprout wings to fly into a brighter future and would always end up right back where they started, square one.

Sitting still was alright. A journey could wait for its turn in another day.

Under the shade of a tall oak tree by the wooden fence were two young boys with the same face.

They sat with their knees in the pulled up dirt, caring nothing for the filth they coated their Church coats with. Wet soil was wedged so far up their fingernail, it was beginning to hurt and stray stones had scraped their palms on numerous occasions as they dug into the earth.

Time and necessity were hardly a concern and their will to resist fears and worries was as strong as it ever was. They were just children after all.

"Nue," groaned the boy to the left "I'm tired."

"I know, Mana." Grumbled Nea, the boy to the right.

He never looked up to meet his brothers eyes, seemingly far too preoccupied with the dirt in front of him even though the other had stopped to rest his aching limbs.

It worried Mana. Ever since their dearest mother had gone to the doctor last week, Nea had been incredibly troubled. He talked so little about it that, if Mana had been anything other than his twin brother, he probably would not have seen the sharp edge of sorrow and dread in his eyes every time he thought he wasn't looking.

He and their mother were both very trouble and, no matter how much he tried, he could not understand why. He knew division and multiplication like the back of his hand; He had a basic understanding of science that most of his teachers complimented as beyond his years; He knew the history of quite a many countries quite well; He even knew a bit more than he would have liked about French and Spanish.

Despite being the older of the two by a few minutes, Mana was never good with complex and mature words. There were some things that adults said that he never quite understood. When their mothers Doctor spoke, he could not help but drift into the brighter sunrise were childish dreams still remained strong so, in short, he had absolutely no idea what the doctor had said to upset his only family so deeply.

Otherwise, he would have known why they were out right now, digging into the earth with their bare hands.

But it was only now that Nea noticed that his brothers efforts were absent and reacted.

He lifted his eyes as a light breeze rushed through his hair, chill biting at his cheeks and ears.

"Why did you stop? Keep going."

"Why?" He inquired through the filter of minor irritation "Why do we need to do this?"

Nea visibly hesitated, catching the meaning of his tone.

Mana pushed himself up, his hands resting on his sore knees.

"We've been digging for so long in the cold." He groaned as he cast his eyes to the sky were vibrant golds faded to mellow blues and the moon was visible on the horizon "We could become ill, you know."

What he said was true. From his estimation, the time was most likely Near six thirty and they weren't supposed to leave the house any time past six. Their mother would usually grab them by the ear and drag them back inside if they were out this late but she had become very tired recently and spent most of her hours in bed.

Mana missed her usual punishments for their disobedience, the disobedience that was mostly Nea's but became his when his went along with the shenanigans and enjoyed every moment of it.

Even if Nea hadn't specifically requested the help, Mana would have followed him anyway even without knowing why.

Nonetheless, he wished to know exactly what ailed him and why digging a hole in the ground took priority over rest in bed and warmth by the fire.

"I'm sorry." Said Nea suddenly, letting his arms drop limply to his sides "You go back inside and warm up. I'll finish this."

"I won't." Mana replied bluntly "Then you would just get sick. I wouldn't want that."

"Go back inside, Mana."

"I won't do it."

"Then why were you complaining to begin with?" Grumbled Nea sarcastically as he continued to dig in the dirt; ripping out stray roots and sharp rocks.

"I don't really know." Mana followed his example sluggishly but willingly "I just wanted to know why we were digging this hole."

A brief silence followed when Nea reminded himself that what he knew their dear mother was going through was in no way Mana's fault even if his brother remained oblivious to it. Somehow, Nea started making him the object of his anger when it was something he never had control over.

He did not intend to do that and he felt guilt rising up inside his chest like a bitter bile.

Knowing his brother deserved an explanation, he reached a hand into his coat pocket which immediately caught Mana's attention, being a lover of everything exciting and new.

"What's that?" He inquired brightly, leaning forward and digging his knees in the dirt to catch a glimpse.

Nea did not respond but opened up his outstretched palm to reveal a small leather pouch. With its mouth slightly loosened, a thin black substance spilled out.

For just a moment, Mana worried his brother had somehow come to acquire gunpowder but the scent of it immediately proved him wrong.

A fume like scent that somehow reminded him of burnt meat.

"Seeds…?" He asked thoughtfully.

"Poppy seeds." Was Nea's abrupt reply as he retracted his hand.

Mana met his eyes as he leaned back away from the hole.

"Mothers favorite!" He said with a bright smile and a clap of his cold hands "How did you find them?"

What he said was true. She did love the flower very much, as did her children, but was unable to add it to her flowerbed on account of them being rather expensive.

"A woman at Church gave them to me." He replied. Nea poured the black seeds in his palm and closed his fist. Then he ran his hand over the hole they had dug and let the seeds slip through his fingers like sand.

"She said to weed the area before planting and to clear the ground of large rocks so that they could grow better."

"Oh?" Mana nodded in agreement.

For a moment, he felt satisfaction, being deceived into thinking that he learned what he wished to learn.

It was only after the younger began to pat the seeds down, looking to them with those unusual sad eyes, that the older realized he actually still didn't know anything.

"But," He inquired carefully "Why now? And why not in mothers flower bed?"

Nea did not answer at first, yet again. Mana just assumed he really felt like keeping secrets today. Nea just kept patting down the seeds with an open palm so that the wind would not blow them away.

"Once they bloom, they are going to be a gift." He replied once the ground felt smooth and even under his fingers "She can't see it or it would ruin the surprise."

"A gift?"

"For her birthday."

It was a date a few months away and Mana had always been unsure what to do for it.

It sounded like a sound plan other than the facts of planting Poppy flowers.

Curiosity had gotten the better of him. He doubted it mattered much but he had to ask, finding the ensuing silence awkward and annoying.

"Don't they mainly grow in the winter?"

Nea looked up "Does it really matter?"

"I don't really know." Mana took a small handful of the dirt that had been pulled up and tossed it into the hole to hide the seeds just as Nea was doing "But I think they might grow better if you waited. I am sure Mother would like it all the same even-"

"No." Nea interrupted suddenly as he got to his feet and dusted off his filthy hands "They have to grow as soon as possible."

Aside of that same unusual sadness his voice held, he spoke with determination. He was not going to change what he decided on so Mana did not see really any reason to try. Nea had always been very stubborn in that way.

"Alright." He gave in quietly.

Mana got to his feet and both boys walked their ways back to the house at a slow and mellow manner.

The sky had now turned a deep shade of dark blue. The pure white puffs of clouds in the sky looked rather bronze in the contrast and the orange moon looked suspiciously bright tonight, shimmering heavily through the skeleton like trees to their left.

Mana was very sleepy. He wanted to rub his eyes, but his hands were covered in dirt and might do some sort of damage. They could not afford glasses, especially not in this season.

They stood in front of the steps that led to the twin front doors; Three ashen stone steps worn down with the passage of time.

Nea reached out a single hand to pull the handles slowly and steadily. If they made any noise, someone would wake up and get them in trouble and that was the last thing they needed.

It suddenly occurred to Mana, who stood in back of him that they would be going straight to bed after this and, after a few hours of sleep, he would forget everything he truly wanted to ask.

He had a funny way of losing important thoughts like the purpose of quantum physics and trigonometry like there was a hole in his head.

Mana had to ask this now, otherwise he feared he would never ask at all.

"Nue?"

His brother retracted his hand immediately as though the handle burnt him. He was listening but he did not turn to face the one who spoke.

Tremors ran through the bones of his small body.

Mana really wanted to ask his question but part of him feared the answer. He had somehow convinced himself that it could never be true but he was scared and now just three worlds stood stagnant, trapped at the tip of his tongue.

But only for a short while because in a moment he set them free.

"Is mother ill?"

He said it. It had slipped out in his moment of hesitation.

Nea had not so much as moved in response and Mana suddenly felt his chest grow cold with a need to explain himself.

"I mean, I just thought" He blurted, holding his hands up as if it would prove his innocence "Since she always has a fever, she always has coughing fits and she always stays in bed that-!"

"She's very sick." Was the quiet reply.

Mana was silent but quickly regained his composure. He took a few steps forward.

"I thought so. Though, I don't believe it's anything to horrible."

Now he did not know if he imagined it but over the sound of the doors whining as they were pulled open, he thought he heard his brother whisper three very important words of his own.

"She won't recover."

After that, the two boys slipped through the ajar doors, silent as the grave and swift as a fox.

After a quick change into their night clothes, they tiptoed up the stairs without the aid of a candle and passed into their little room.

Once they said a quick night time pray, they slipped into their beds and under their warm covers without hesitation.

They would have been asleep had their racing heartbeats and chilled skin not gotten in the way of a welcomed slumber. Nea knew it and Mana quickly realized it but The former was determined to pretend that he had fallen asleep, otherwise he knew his brother would probably start up an interesting conversation and they would talk on and on for the rest of the night if the could.

They had school tomorrow and now wasn't the time for sleep deprivation.

Minutes felt like hours and about ten of them passed when Nea's eyelids began to feel very heavy but Mana decided to take this chance to get one last word in.

He pushed the covers off his body and let his feet touch the cold floor as he walked to Nea's bed.

"Nue?" He whispered as he shook his shoulder very lightly "Are you awake?"

Lightly grumbling, a now very awake Nea glared at him with distrustful eyes.

"I am now." He replied.

Mana took that as welcome to sit down on his bed as he always did and he did just that with a light smile on his lips.

After a moment of hearing no protests, he began to speak of ghastly things in the dead of night when only they could hear.

"I never told you but the day you were ill from the flu a few months ago," Nea shuddered at the memory of the fervor, the sore throat and the bowl of sick in front of him, a memory he knew all too well. "Mr. Tapp let me have a special lesson with other children. You'll never guess what he did."

"Oh? What did he do?" Nea said as he turned his face away, his words muffled by his pillow.

"He dissected a dead woman."

Of all the unusual tales of life in school, that was the very last he expected to hear from Mana and so bluntly told.

"...What? Why?"

"He dissected a dead woman to see what it was that killed her."

"Why are we talking about something so ghastly before bed?"

Mana continued, envisioning that day to the best of his ability "You see, she wasn't just any woman. She was a witch."

"Go back to sleep, Mana."

"You must believe me! She had the tattoos to prove it." He insisted.

"Mr. Tapp told me that she had died from execution. They had her hung, you see but before execution, she had a perfectly healthy mind and body."

With a light inhale, Nea replied "What is your point exactly?"

"When her body was given to Mr. Tapp for study, he found that almost three fourths of her brain were missing at the time of death. He told my that was impossible because she was functioning perfectly well before execution and yet she should not have been alive with that much brain damage."

Truthfully Nea had seen this coming. Mana was always far too nice a person to ignore someone else's suffering and would try his very best to console them.

He knew this all too well and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Yet, why did he suddenly feel so angry?

"Are you equating our good mother to a disgusting witch?" He suddenly inquired and the smile on his brothers face disappeared in an instant.

"What? No, I just-!"

It bothered Nea so because Mana hardly knew anything; pain, sadness or even the full truth; and here he was trying to tell him that he shouldn't feel so angry that his own mother was going to die just because someone said they might see her again?

The world was not as black and white as a child might perceive.

Did his heart mean so little in a world so black and white?

"How did the professor even know it was truly the witch who spoke?" Nea replied with more venom in his voice than he had intended "It was probably just evil talking through her, anyway. Don't believe stupid stories like that."

"I-I know it's silly..." Mana muttered, feeling rather unsure of himself "I just thought…"

"Well you thought wrong." Was his poisoned reply, whispered through clenched teeth "As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing beyond this life at all!"

Nea faced the moon now and a sky full of twinkling stars so he could never have seen the look on his brother's face or the harm he had inflicted when he said those words.

He probably would not have cared anyway.

Mana swallowed, his wide eyes searching the room seemingly looking for help and his throat dry "I don't think you really believe that."

All this thinking had alas made very tired.

He hoped to go to sleep now and forget about the whole thing. He regretted bringing it up to begin with. He felt so very incredibly stupid that he no longer wanted to talk.

So, he lowered himself to give Nea a single soft kiss on his temple.

"Goodnight Nea." He whispered hoarsely and retreated to his own softer bed in an instant.

Only now it was Mana who slept and Nea who stayed awake.

He had not intended to have been so cruel. It simply enraged him because his dear mother he could do nothing to save told him a story hardly a word different.

Deep down, he knew he was just a silly little boy.

Even after night had fallen upon the valley and all had gone to their beds, the vast day was not black but rather the color of a clean navy blue, the color of the ink most common in schools.

No one dare see it but in a dream the world from cracked eyelids were color divided into ribbons of form and mass, shifting and twisting in a perfect rhythmic path like the current. Wind wondered in patterns like frost and left a trail, a streak like the artist running his hand over the wet paint. Starlight shine bright like the golden halos of guardian angels watching the children of God and all creation seemed to come alive in a symphony that only could be comprehended by man in his dreams.

Nea could never truly have known what his eyes beheld that starlit nightfall, the vision he witnessed through the pure lens of a child's eyes but he dared to say that it was the melody of wolves howling through the night that lulled him to slumber.

And so the boy slept in peace and he could never truly know the events his harshly spoken words would set into motion.

Long before sprouting, those seeds that carried the desire of that one boy were washed away as though they never existed by a grand flood not a season after and all would soon change.


	2. Chapter II Part I

Chapter I

Through the looking glass, if you dared venture through it, only the guidance of a star could lead you to the very unusual land of magic and mystery known simply as Wonderland.

It was a place unlike the common world were the laws of science and nature were relative, moldable and changeable. Those who knew these laws well were able to effect their surrounding environments to their own will. They held the power in this world of unusual beauty.

This power could be harnessed in a number of ways but without the proper guidance, it could cost one one's soul.

They held power one could only dream of but, make no mistake about it, these people were not gods. They were mortals at the mercy of God's will just like any other.

Death had always and would always come to all; To the kings and commoners, to the heroes and villains.

None could escape the grave.

It was once upon a stormy night of a mid september that that fact had rung true in the grand metropolis called Wonderland and it was once upon this sorrowful time that two worlds collided and our story begins.

Gravitational tremors of this magnitude had not been seen in over a decade.

The sound of stray gravity and uncontrollable magnetic forces thrashing out wildly and randomly like wip was deafening. Acres of ground, trees and all, were torn from the ground in one foul swoop by forces unseen. Houses were uprooted and cast to the ground like broken pottery, the remains of the architecture and all that lay inside strewn across Wonderland. Iron debris as large as a man's fist damaged windows and destroyed carefully paved roads as the fraying magnetic forces attracted it to the sky.

A good six hours previous to this moment, a gathering of storm clouds dyed a mysterious shade of violet told Wonderland of the wretched storm that was to come and every citizen was ordered to remain in the safety of their homes through the night till the storm ended.

No one anticipated that the storm would do this much damage.

No one could have anticipated the power outage and no one could have known that the most feared villain in all of Wonderland would flee from his confinements with no one to stop him.

The average citizen of Wonderland might believe that the Great Earl had planned this natural disaster, being mere sheep in this game played by the monsters.

The more educated people in the grand echochamber that was the cities castle found their suspicions of a world that favored villains above the valiant confirmed by the news of the gravitational tremors that broke out all through the grand city and the wretched man who escaped from his prison in this moment of weakness.

The royal guardsmen, who were in the know of almost everything there was to know about the government and all it did in the shadows, did not have time to cave to such childish and superstitious beliefs. All the group knew was that the gravitational tremors tore up the power lines, causing a mass power outage throughout Wonderland and, under the veil of night, a murderer on death row known as the feared Great Earl walked straight through the front door of the imperial prison with no one to stop him.

But the opinion of the Great Earl himself was something not commonly asked for. It was understandable because no one wanted to know the twisted opinion of an infamous villain, a madman, a murderer.

They would never venture into the mind of such a perverted man once upon this wretched night.

Every living person, animal or plant could share their opinions on what the man wanted, what he thought or where he stood as of now but the only one who could truly convey the hidden motives and secret desires of the infamous villain was the infamous villain himself and yet he was the last person they would dare ask.

The Great Earl never quite understood this viewpoint because he, at the moment, was, had always been, and would always be for the foreseeable future, more than open to sharing his thoughts on the world.

The city of Wonderland was built from the ground up around one thousand years ago upon a peak of the highest mountain on the continent, no humble raise in the ground.

The infestation of humans grew far too rich for their own good upon their high place and took it upon themselves to build a castle for their ruler. A seventy nine year long building project was underwent to build upon the highest point in all of Wonderland the palace of Hearts, the pinnacle of the people's greatness, a fabulous show of their power and wealth.

And so goes the story of the grand buildings birth, or so the Earl had heard from several scattered and mildly unreliable sources.

Hugging the side of a limestone cliff as though it were testing nature's power, curving where it curved and falling away where it fell, stood one of the most impressive pieces of architecture the Earl had ever beheld.

Wide roads paved with gold plated bricks led to the building and all its pristine majesty.

Six pointed spires as black as the night clawed the heavens. Shorter towers occupied by a hundred rooms grew in a bouquet at the side of each spire like a large fungi growth upon a thick tree trunk.

In the middle, with three spires on each side, was a vast window of stained glass, the kind that put even the fields of mountain flowers to shame, gentle framed by the iron folds of a ribbed vault just above a set of three wide twin doors.

Sweeping the skies star adorned gown, the Earl might compare its its elegance and beauty to that of the late Queen of Hearts, though that may have been to high a compliment to even a woman such as her.

This, on its own was only the tip of the iceberg, the mere entrance to a beautiful behemoth of art that took up a space of approximately four acres in building space alone. That did not include the four royal gardens, the two ponds or the vast empty roads of gold that led up to it all.

The place that once welcomed the Earl but now cursed his very existence.

The laughable fact of it was that this building was not the true pride of this people, nor had it been their most famed accomplishment.

A smile tugged his lips, dyed red in his own blood.

Upon the pathway, stood barefoot a beautiful young man, no older than twenty-one.

His slender body once adorned with silk robes and the finest precious gems now shivered in the winds hidden chill, clothed in nothing but hideous prison rags turned a pitch black from continual use, age, dirt, blood and other unmentionable filths.

His once pure skin was filthy with blood and open wounds, his soft black hair now clinging to his forehead, neck and shoulders with sweat. He hadn't grown fingernails in a long while and a few of his teeth were gone. It hadn't mattered to him because he knew both would grow back eventually.

He had endured torture this past season like he had never experienced before and yet, never once had the light faded from hi golden brown eyes.

They still shimmered as healthy and surely as the moon unseen, never once did they fade.

The gleam in his eyes like gold in the shadows was the only recognizable trait the Great Earl still retained after so long a tribulation.

The castle stood in the path of the Great Earl, fierce and stunning like both a worthy opponent and a loving mother but he found himself drawn forward as though by the allure of a voluptuous prostitute.

The Great Earl did strut with confidence to its warm embrace, disappearing into the forest of clustered columns.

The storm that raged like the clash of two mighty armies overhead did nothing to quicken his pace or hasten his stride.

Though the one inflicting brutal wounds upon this strange and beautiful land was a cruel and mighty beast to the common folk, it served as a guardian knight, a protector to the Earl as he sought his shelter and escape in this place of splendor.

The storm hindered the Royal Guard in their hunt for him but never would they have guessed he might escape their clutches by returning to the royal palace of Hearts, the place where he had dirtied his hands in the blood of his first true murder.

It was through this place that he would be saved and that the was true beauty of the irony.

The rusted iron hinges of the twin doors moaned sorrowfully as though mourning what had been lost, a wordless curse upon his name and birth as he threw them open with ease.

What greeted him there was a shallow, seemingly endless abyss, an unearthly sort of darkness where neither breadth nor heartbeat should reside.

This castle of color, once so full of life and contentment now lay stagnant and silent as the grave those very occupants now sleep.

Distasteful though the memories of that night were, thoughts of sin and murder were consumed by this young man on a daily basis. The weight of taking the life of another hardly hindered him anymore, much less weighed him down and he entered into the palace with a light heart.

It was what the years had done to a boy like him. It was what a decade of the most deranged ecstasy had done to a once very innocent young boy.

With a snap of his fingers, a small spark became a flame at the tips. It did not burn him.

He remembered every detail. He remembered that there were candles placed in the doorway for as electricity was a reliable source of light but the power was gone and those candles were his only way of navigating this place while expending very little of his own energy.

The Earl reached out into the darkness till his fingers met with hardened wax. Once a single twinkling light had been brought to life upon its aged wick, he removed it from its place at the doorway as he contiNued into the darkness fEarlessly.

The young man ascended up many flights of wide stone steps, a side path he knew would lead him to the highest room in the tallest spire should he contiNue to the end, one hand holding the candle, the other stroking the smooth bronze of the railing.

The light illuminated a familiar door; Old wood with a brass handle. It was not locked as it never was for reasons he would never know. He felt a draft coming from the extravagant room just beyond this door but instead of carrying the perfume of wild mountain flowers, all he could smell was dust, blood and static.

The Earl wrinkled his nose in disgust and anger. The royal guard had yet to clean the palace after what had happened, which meant that the thrones successors had yet to be elected.

In other words, it meant that the monarchy of Wonderland still had yet to repent for all that they had done.

What a lot of ignorant children, he thought, they got what was coming to them.

But in that moment, though faint and distant, the infamous villain was unnerved by the sound of the doors at the bottom of the stairs whining as they closed.

His hand froze against the handle's aged wood as he listened; He listened, ears so sharp he could hear the heartbeat of a mouse but he heard nothing.

Yet he stilled. He would not ignore what he heard. If it were a Royal Guard who picked up on his trail and walked through those doors, he would have been dead already, they certainly wouldn't have closed the door after themselves.

He let the candle fall from his fingers and when it hit the ground, he stomped on the flame. It had served its purpose but it was useless beyond this point.

A sentimental maid or some kind of stray child was still in question. Whoever they were, they would not find him unless they were searching.

So, with the delicate touch of a mother, the Earl pulled the door from it's from and ran into the shadows through the crack. He left it open. If he was being followed, he would know soon enough.

Though the door was a tightly wound staircase composed of flimsy iron steps hanging on by a few old and rusty screws. He rushed up the tight and musty space, his hands instinctively reaching to the close stone walls for support.

This tall spire was abandoned long ago. Once it was used as a chimney to rid the castle of smoke during the harsh winters mountains would bring but when the new age of technology docked upon the horizon and the smoke fires brought was turned into energy, this lonely spire became nothing more than a decoration.

The outdated stairs moaned under his weight in a wordless and very petty insult as he ascended swiftly upwards. The Earl knew, despite this, that if he were a common person, these steps would surely have given way underNeath him and he would have fallen to his death in the shadowed castle depths.

Adrenaline rushed through his veins rapidly like he had overdosed on a drug, intoxicating his and putting on a show of lights upon his vision.

Many times he had narrowly escaped an untimely death, but he never forgot the pleasure that came with the thrill.

What others may loathe and fear, he now lived for; The excitement, the ecstasy, the racing heartbeat, everything.

But it was only around the tenth time he ran a full circle, around halfway up the spire and nearing escape, he instinctively paused in his step.

The crack in the door was small so closing it would be silent, but the Earl had heard it loud, clear like the bell at the stroke of twelve midnight.

He heard the rapid intakes of air and feet slapping against iron, the wind and steel whining in protest at the arrival of a sudden and inconsiderate intruder.

The young man had everything from his feet to his pretty little head planted firmly upon this earth; He knew when someone was chasing after him in addition to knowing exactly what to do if he found himself in such a situation. He had trained.

He jerked his body around in a fluid motion upon this slanted and unstable ground; Even then, the stairs did not give way under his delicate steps, lighter than an egret's feather.

His foot planted firmly upon the steps in front of him and his heel grinding against the wall, he lunged backwards and it came as no surprise when he caught someone.

He used the slanted ground to his advantage as he put all his weight upon the intruder and forced them to the ground with ease.

The swift motion set off a symphony of creaks and whines in the highs and lows of the architecture, its every nook and cranny shaken down to its foundation but soon after, the calm came after the storm and the tall tower returned to its natural calm, serene state.

They did not struggle. All had become quite still like the paused moment captured in a photograph.

The stranger fell to the ground completely willingly and even though a hood hid his face from view, the Earl could not sense any fear coming from this unknown person.

The wrists he held to the ground above the person's head to subdue him were cold and without a pulse like that of a corpse while the chest did not dare pull in a breath as he held them down.

This person was frighteningly still underNeath him and if he hadn't chased the Earl this far, he would have thought he had tackled some kind of doll to the ground.

But it was not a doll. Dolls do not move. That single thought echoed in his mind a thousand times over before he brought his fingers close and snapped, the sharp friction creating a single red flame in between his face and the face of the one that had followed him up these stairs.

The Earl felt the coldest of chills run down his spine, through his joints and over the expanse of his flesh. Despite the flame, the edges of his fingertips went numb from the cold. Despite the constant stream of blood that wet his throat, his throat went dry.

The Earl starred in beautiful horror and confusion into his own eyes and those same familiar and so foreign pair of golden brown eyes stared into his.

This doppelganger, this reflected image did not gaze at him in fear but in the most serene and kind recognition, the sort a man like the Great Earl did nothing to deserve.

Long black locks of clean and freshly washed black hair fell out of his silk white hood like rivers of ink, sharply contrasting his healthy, soft skin and in the Earl's current state, perhaps there was no similarity but he remembered clearly like a gentle spring breeze trapped in his mind.

For a moment, alien emotions stirred in his chest, the cogs and coils of his perfect system throne here and there by the gentle breeze, caught completely off guard by this sudden barrage of attacks.

A name. A simple name lay on the tip of his tongue of his tongue with a strange flavor but he did not let it fall.

He regained control, the brief moment of confusion had passed. His cogs and springs were put back in their natural place, the front of stillness replaced and twice as strong as the days before.

The trick, the illusion, the alteration was something the Earl had seen before; Almost too real, almost surreal clarity burnt into his vision and yet it could never be all it wished to be to someone like him because it was simply impossible.

He remembered the words spoken upon that day long ago. It was like a dream, no different from the complex structure in front of him but one contradicted the other and the fault in the latter exposed. The unstable architecture collapsed just as soon as it had been completed and it was gone, soon to be forgotten in time.

A homunculus was all the creature in front of him was. A creation of the Bandersnatch, Tykki. Though lifelike and almost undeniably real, it was a mere mold inspired by real people; It was neither alive nor real.

It was a homunculus that reflected the Earl's image, probably created for the sure purpose of staggering him this way, to hold him here and catch sight of him so that the Bandersnatch knew exactly where he was.

The Great Earl grimace in disgust as he rose from the body he had pinned to the stairs, loathing whatever it was that made him fulfill this illusions mission.

As he rose, he felt himself overcome with an unusual uNuese. He had lost focus and it showed in how the stairs wobbled and whined underNeath him.

This homunculus had seen him which meant that Tykki knew exactly where he was. That was nothing to panic about but it meant the young man needed to quicken his pace to the top of the spire.

He stood straight up in the darkness and brushed the filth off his attire, not that it would help.

The creature had yet to so much as budge. With its purpose fulfilled, it probably saw no further need for locomotion but it gave the Great Earl a chill like that of winter, feeling as though he were in this dire situation in the presence of a corpse.

He wanted to shake the feeling off but it had become a part of him, like a vein. Even though he knew he probably should, as the infamous Great Earl and all that protecting his precious image entailed, he did not want to kill the homunculus nor did he see much of a need for it.

It had already won, its purpose fulfilled. If it had not seen him and he killed it from a distance than the murder would be justified but now, killing it would be done purely out of aggression.

Perhaps it was the effect of being so long in such a wretched prison but the mere thought of bloodshed made him feel sick to his stomach.

He did not feel the slightest change on his exterior or in the many layers underNeath but in his very core, he was shaken. Something was about to change but he just didn't see it.

"Run," He hissed through clenched bloodied, not sure if the creature could hear him but he didn't care, "Run, little homunculus. Leave this place and return to your master."

It was his final word and what he assumed to be a proper goodbye to the creature that stirred up such odd emotions inside him before he dashed up the stairs to escape this place.

He ran with a new energy, a less pleasant more claustrophobic sensation. The drug lost its effect and his mind was left bare to withdrawals and distractions.

In the blur of the moment, he arrived at the top floor.

The staircase ended abruptly.

The last step was shorter than everyone before it, bringing him suddenly to a small circular room; A plain concrete floor coated by a thick and oily layer of dust and mold, smooth walls adorned with hand painted images of heroic battles and mysterious creatures depicted throughout history, a white ceiling robed in heavy and intricate cobwebs carefully designed throughout the years.

He brought himself to the very center and whipped his head around wildly for a moment. In the front of the small room, the side that faced the city, his searching gaze immediately caught sight of a large circular window baring neither fame nor drape and only visible in the darkness because of the momentary flashes of bronze lightning the Earl saw just beyond its scope.

A sigh of relief involuntarily escaped his dry lips.

Cold drafts rustled his rags and chilled his flesh pleasantly. He took steps towards the round window, each flash of lightning, each vein of light splitting the sky and silhouetting the young man's form for a mere millisecond in time.

So close. He reached his hand out as he approached the outside. He felt the unstable gravity nipping against the tips of his fingers like frost. Slight electric shocks in a humid haze surrounded him.

Soon enough, he was close enough to reach his whole forearm out through the window, fingers delicately curved and stroking a nonexistent form softly.

In the day, this view of the grand metropolis would have been spectacular. The city was beautiful beyond words and the design and splendor alone was bathed in love for life and energy.

They were truly the strongest of them all, the goliath of the continent with no young shepherd to match their strengths. All this and yet a mere power outage was enough to snuff them out this way like the way a candle is blown out at the slightest wind. Perhaps this joyous day to remember was a testimony not only to their strengths but to the follies and vanities the nation had grown so fond of, a beautiful nation like a naive shop girl in the prime of life.

Now, the Earl looked down upon a sea of empty darkness and perhaps that's what the city of Wonderland always was.

So quiet, should anyone have been around to hear it, they would have thought they had imagined it, with his hand upon an invisible curtain just waiting to be torn open, the Earl spoke the word.

"Open."

Almost as though vines of a violet light sprouted from his fingertips at the verbalization of that one word, a single horizontal line of an ethereal glow shot from where his fingers met the darkness.

Energy like a ball of yarn gathered at the center steadily growing with every second like the opening of a great violet eye.

Any moment now, the Earl knew the portal he had opened upon this starless night would climax and he would be allowed safe passage from this place long before the rooster crowed or the morning dew had a chance to fall.

He knew this and yet he knew full well that if the homunculus didn't bring the royal guard to the castle, the energy signal of the portal surely would.

It had always been a plan relying mainly on theoretical timing, that the Earl should have enough time to reach the portal and escape according to his own math.

He was quite poor on time already but the encounter meant even less. All he could do was cross his spider like fingers and hope that he would have enough time to go through the climaxed portal and for it to vanish so the signature would no longer be trackable.

Tykki smiling in triumph, calling him a child and scolding him as though he were his parent would be something far worse than a miserable death by public execution, the young man thought.

All he could do was hope.

Hope.

Since when did the infamous Great Earl rely on something so pathetic and childish as hope?

Since when had the mighty fallen so low as to rely on that that cannot be seen?

Since when? Well, could it be any other time than a time as special as now?

Speaking of which, speaking of the now, speaking of the present time in this life, the beautiful young man known as the Great Earl heard a voice.

"No!" Cried out a familiar voice, frantic and yet serene and soft spoken in nature, "Don't leave me!"

The Earl paused, turning to face the owner of that gentle voice hidden under the veil of darkness. In his eyes was the poisonous gaze of a snake.

The homunculus. It had returned a second time.

He should have expected no less. Surely Tykki had ordered the creature to stall him so the man could have enough time to easily catch him in his tracks.

Yet the worst of it was that should he be caught now, not only would he be killed but his moving house, his precious and adored hiding place would be discovered and surely pillaged.

He would not let that happen under any circumstances.

"You. Come into the light." He hissed low, beckoning the creature closer.

A silence followed almost as though it was slow to process his words. Homunculi may have been unable to think for themselves, but normally the master was in full control of their mind so the Earl thought it odd.

Was this yet another system Tykki created to stall for time? At the moment, he could never be sure.

But not a moment after thinking those very thoughts, the sound of feet falling against concrete signaled to him that the creature was approaching just as he had been told.

The Earl was prepared for anything, be it an offensive on his part or the creatures. He may have been weak now, but surely he could overpower something as feeble as a homunculus, a mere hologram.

A part of him was half expecting Tykki himself to walk out of that darkness, and yet he was not surprised when that wasn't the case.

In the light of the energized portal, he found that what he observed on the stairs was not far from the honest truth.

Standing some yards away from him was a copy, a mirror image, a duplicate, a perfect replica of himself.

The creature was clad in a silk robe, pure clean white light fresh snowfall to sharply contrast it's dark skin. Unlike the Earl, this creatures complexion was healthy, it's unusually long hair clean and freshly washed. Though the original, the Earl looked like a corpse in comparison. Though he was the one living, baring a beating heart in his chest, this creature held more vitality than he ever had.

What an unusual reflection it was, reflecting not what was but all that could have been should fate have gone differently.

The reflection before him was nothing short of a beautiful creature, pure and kind in appearance like the fae themselves or a ghost but it, for reasons unknown to the Earl, appeared frightened; The creature did not meet his gaze but kept its eyes to the ground intensely, shifting its weight from foot to foot and swinging its arms back and forth like a child.

The creature was so beautiful in this heavy darkness, its natural elegance like a light. It struck him as odd that the perfect illusion took to such fear.

Just what had Tykki programmed this creature with.

It didn't matter, though. It's lifespan would end come the morning light and he would be far away from this city.

"Just who…" He whispered not to the homunculus but to Tykki himself, knowing the creatures hearing and sight all the possessions of the master, "Just who do you all think you are, that you could hold me...?"

As expected, its face screwed up and it furrowed its brow in confusion. The Earl contiNued anyway.

"You must think very high on yourselves to thi-! To think that you could ever-!" Anger boiled up inside his chest, the sort he could never even begin to express in words or actions, and it took him over for just a moment but it was just long enough, "Just who do you think I am that I-?!"

"Nea Campbell."

"That I would-!"

A pause. A heartbeat. A moment.

All the anger that fogged his mind like an insurmountable wall vanished in that time simply because of the sound uttered by a mere hologram. That had never happened before. The wrath of the Great Earl was not something anyone could easily curb, much less someone who didn't know him well.

Surely it was just a coincidence. There was no way in all that was that that thing could have intentionally chosen those specific words, those specific sounds to string together.

Almost instantly, the young man's entire body and soul wished to reject the concept but he still grew as pale as a ghost and the tongue inside his clenched jaw had never tasted saltier.

His fingers ceased to claw his forehead and his head rose from his hands.

Oh goodness, he thought, surely it is just a homunculus, surely he had said that name during his torture and Tykki was using it against him now, but he was Nearly positive he hadn't said anything of the sort.

His mind searched desperately in utter confusion for some kind of reason or some sort of possibility that would justify this lowly creature digging up such a ghost from his past as that wretched name.

"How….?" the young man breathed, almost pleading for this mysterious reflection who seemed to know so little to give him an answer, "How… How do you… know that name…?"

And when that same reflection responded by removing its hood and giving him an all too familiar smile he truly never thought he would see again, the Great Earl's mechanical heart ceased to beat.

It that moment, Nea Campbell breathed his first breath of life in over fourteen years.

"You may not remember…" It said, tilting its head to the side like a child as it shook the very foundations of Nea's world like it was as easy as breaking a twig in half, something Nea knew to be so like this creature in front of him, "But my name…. Is Mana …"

Please don't do this to me. Please, not now, not again, never again.

"It's been a while, Nea…"

My world was a palace of stable structures and laws written upon the purest of limestones.

My world was a well built boat upon a raging sea, I thought surely no force in nature should sink such a craft.

My world was a place of comfort to me, a place that kept me grounded when my fears threatened to steal me away and I thought so surely that nothing could cast it down the way your smile and the look in your brown eyes so similar to mine had.

I was fine and then you came in and ruined everything.

I was a king of this land and you stripped me of my kingdom and brought me low.

What you have done to me has not been forgotten nor will it ever cease to haunt my every waking moment but, perhaps it's because I doubted that serene peace, perhaps it's because I knew somewhere inside me, that I wasn't alright.

I didn't really think about it at the time, but perhaps that is why I pulled you through the portal once upon that dark accursed night.

Perhaps, you were right all along, Mana.


	3. Chapter III Part I

Chapter II

No matter where you are, no matter where you and no matter where you will be, you will always stand under the light of the same stars.

Throughout whatever country, whatever continent, through the shadowy depths of the oceans, through worlds and universes, through even dimensions, those same stars you knew as a child and will grow to love as an adult will remain crested like precious gems upon the skies glorious crown.

It's a mystery, honestly, and something I have always pondered upon when I was much younger.

In the sky lay strings of a billion lights, silent observers of every sin and good deed every man, woman and child should commit upon this earth, that cut through every layer of reality; They see and hear everything there is to see and hear but even these are not gods for death finds these, as well.

The people of Wonderland could never have known exactly how I arrived upon their pleasure drunken land. They could never have known, so I took the opportunity and I lied.

I told every single one of them that I had discovered the trans-dimensional powers of the stars and that it was through that star, that very pride and joy of the people that they treasured so dearly that I came.

It should have been treated the same as any other great and revolutionary theory. It should have been enclosed in a golden folder along with others in the hall of records where my name would earn respect.

Instead, however, the late king told addressed the people of Wonderland to tell them that his Royal Guard had uncovered enemy secrets. They said that skilled spies had uncovered things the Great Earl did not want them to know, the way in which he would travel about the city without anyone being able to track him.

They lied to those people they swore to protect.

How very human.

Shortly after, the White Rabbit and his organization took my theory and ran with it, as most do in rumored times of war. Those little scientists found a way to harness the star's abilities and created something called dimensional gaps.

These programmable holes in space time, each one unique with its own numbered code, had various uses such as a trash dump, a place to rid the land of criminals, a place for citizens to hide for shelter when the Great Earl came and attacked their region, and a lovely way to completely erase evidence of crimes committed by government officials.

That's not to say I didn't get anything good out of it. The first gap created was politely titled "000-000" and it had belonged to me till this very day.

It is the place I lived in since I was ten years old and it is the place where I built my moving house.

Really, it was less a house, more a mansion. I do not mean to brag about my abilities or what I am capable of but I happen to think that building is my finest work. If I always thought it a shame that it's true beauty was never something observed by others because its form remained invisible inside the gap.

I, drunk on the ecstasy of escaping one of the most dangerous and heavily guarded prisons on the continent, truly was saddened that no one appreciated the beauty of my wonderful moving house even though all I really could see, dazed and sprawled out upon the exquisite carpet as I was, was the crystal chandelier like a halo of golden light above my head.

When I was nine years old, I had seen that wonderful piece of work upon the ceiling of a lesser nobles mansion. Because I had been raised in a Nearly abandoned countryside, I had never seen anything quite like it in my life. It was so beautiful in my child like eyes that I decided give it the honour of being the first item I had ever stolen.

If I had to compare it to a woman, it would best be the younger sister of the current count of clovers, except the chandelier made far better company, in my opinion.

I must have looked like a fool just laying there on that filthy carpet, giggling like a child because I had forgotten how sweet the lukewarm air perfumed by hundreds of flavors to tickle and entice the senses was.

Think of this. The Great Earl taken from his throne, tortured almost constantly and reduced the such a childlike state that even a glimpse of my own house would make me act so shamefully.

Think of how little I cared and think about how much everything mattered. I smiled till my face hurt and yet the hurt made me smile all the more.

Was this happiness? If it was, then why didn't it make me feel good? If this was laughter, if this was the joy of accomplishing something great and profound, then why was this heart so empty?

I knew from the way the flesh of my chest tingles and how my ribs felt like hot irons branding my lungs that I had brought those very organs necessary for respiration to the point of collapse.

I knew by the agonizing pain in my joints that I had sprained the majority of them. The swelling from the bruises had already begun.

The sudden wave of nausea that washed over me told me tales of my minor concussion and major malnourishment. The former would have to be fixed before the latter.

I had known beforehand that the blood crabs, mutated crustaceans used in one of the Cheshire cat's many torture rituals, would leave a serious infection along with Nearly fatal internal bleeding but I had underestimated how urgent immediate treatment would be.

The compressor cores I had stolen off the soldiers on my way out of the prison had worn off and the injuries from my torture had surfaced yet again.

In short, if I wasn't operated on immediately, I would probably die.

What perplexed me in my half delirious state was this; I was a good boy and filled my very bones with exhaustion and injury, I had pushed myself to the absolute limit and further. I did all this and yet I did not feel anything. Rather I felt empty.

What more did I have to do to quench the thirst of the monster that drove me to do these things?

Just where else was there to go, I wondered, just how much farther would I have to climb before all this finally felt real?

But I soon began to feel sleepy, so sleepy I thought I might drown.

The feeling of drifting off with no control made me panic. I had no idea whether or not I'd wake up again. The factors in this equation were unknown.

I had the sudden urge to call out, to cry out for Fiona, my maid but my tongue did not seem to want to work in my mouth. My jaw had gone lack and my ears rang so I had no idea whether or not I even made a sound.

I thought she surely would come for me, as she always heard me and scolded me when I made the slightest sound in the halls. It would be the same now.

Surely the years had not dulled her hearing so very much.

"You! You stupid boy!"

Almost instantly, my body relaxed.

But quickly, I felt warmth spread up my body at some sort of physical contact. I knew I was being held by someone even in this state because of how much I was repulsed by such action.

Someone moved in front of my view of the chandelier, silhouetted by its golden light and then I saw no more.

All my world became dark. Not black, just dark.

Bright colours were replaced by much darker shades. Outlines for solid objects vanished and the colours blurred the way water blurs colours upon a painting.

Light was a solid and the ground was an ocean of a thousand memories. The walls spoke words, each change in wallpaper having its own unique voice, and the stairways spoke words, each new step bearing its own unique song.

The air was clean like a mountain peaks and yet it was stuffy like one were inhaling cotton with every breath.

I felt safe and yet it was evident that evil was upon me in every corner.

What was time in a realm like this? Did it even exist here when my lips spoke empty words and my ears heard only the heartbeat of all that I had lost? What was time anyway, but a limitation. Surely I would achieve perfection if those shackles were taken from my wrists. Surely I would be free if it were gone, and I would alas discover the formula for true happiness.

Where was I, anyway? Was I in the cupboard hiding like a child? Was I the fire in the oven ragefully burning all I could to ashe till I was all alone? Or was I the crystal chandelier upon the ceiling, defying gravity without a care in the world, simply asking for your love. Who was to say, really.

What was my appearance in this world? Was I a man or a child? Was it all really relative or did every aspect matter? Should I keep my eyes open or become like the blind men who knew nothing of appearances?

Was any of this even important? Was I wasting my time questioning everything down to the formula under all the layers of skirts? Is it better to be a mindless animal or would it be better to think and think, think like like the maneater slays or the ant builds upon foundations till my clock is done ticking and I can't think anymore?

Am I losing my mind? Do I even have a mind to lose?

What was this feeling? Who could know or tell when it was but felt once in a dream? Perhaps I would forget, I thought to myself, perhaps I'd forget come morning and these thoughts and questions would no longer trouble my weary heart.

Surely, I would forget. I might clean the filthy house and cut the cord, not knowing where it should like I always do.

Yes, I told myself I would forget when I was conscious.

Of course, being aware of the canyon between consciousness and a dream, the differences between the fake and the real, all that was in between the illusion and delusion is the first step to awakening.

Soon, I became aware.

I became aware of the warm air upon my bare skin, the uncomfortable heat trapped inside the bandages wrapped tight against my stomach, legs and shoulders, and thee barely existing space between me and the bed I was laying upon.

Ah, my soft bad. I knew no truer and more faithful lover than that soft feather filled mattress. Actually, I had no idea what filled my bed but I was never going to dare cut into it to find out. All I needed to know was that it gave me more good dreams, less back aches and all the encouragement I needed to get out in the morning.

Now, my first instinct upon awakening was not to open my eyes but rather to declare at a volume that I knew Fiona would hear, "Why didn't you cover me up? I'll catch death if you're not careful!".

I was far more awake than I should be, having suffered a Near complete body collapse one night previous but because of this, I was able to hear the more that worth it growl in rage come from my loyal maid's lips from the Nearest corner of what I knew to be my bedroom once I opened my tired eyes.

Through the violet veil like drapes hung over my bed, I could see that the grand triangle shaped bedroom was wonderful and just as familiar as the scowl on Fiona's in the corner by my wardrobe.

Fiona Reeves was not young. If I had to guess her age, taking skin texture and bone health into consideration, I would say that she was fifty three and that all those wrinkles that lined her face like the stripes of the mighty white tiger she was was just from stress and worry.

I had asked her for her age once when I was about ten and my face was swollen for two weeks. Knowing that she was more than capable of doing the same thing to my beautiful face, now, I didn't dare ask again.

"It's because of me you aren't dead now," She seethed, observing me coldly through her rectangular spectacles and ringing her hands in her laced white apron, "You stupid wretched idiotic-!"

I always had told her to wear something more fancy than a simple maids gown and apron, something more suiting to the most trusted woman in the Great Earl's household. Every time I tried to gift her with some sort satine skirt or whatever velvet petticoat I could find, she rejected it, claiming such frivolous things were just hindrances to her work.

As much as that got on my nerves, I knew that if I forced those things on her, her chocolate chip cookies would become significantly less delicious and as much as I wanted to believe otherwise, I didn't think the cogs and coils inside me could operate properly without them.

That being said, I did my best to look away and not pay too much attention to it.

"Yes yes, indeed, of course, flattery will get you nowhere." I turned away from her sight and let my arm fall over my bed like I were embracing it. It deserved that much after all we had been through.

For a few short moments, I took in the smell of the air, the light of the half burnt candles, the familiar assortment of precious items and stolen trinkets scattered all over my hand woven carpet exactly where I left them.

All this. I missed all this dearly when I was in that cold prison cell, my wounds crying meaningless tears of blood.

I missed all this and yet having it all returned to me did not bring me any joy at all.

Fiona began to walk towards me with the usual elephant stomp in her step I missed so much. The very ground shook as she approached me and I soon found her strong hand on my shoulder.

She pulled, not minding if she aggravated the injuries I didn't have anymore, and pushed me against the matters, forcing me to face her, baring a stern expressing that only made me laugh all the more.

"Is that it? Is that all you have to say for yourself?" She hissed into my face, hints of oregano evident in her breath.

I furrowed my brow in confusion despite the fact that I knew exactly what she was talking about, determined not to get this particular lecture when I hadn't even gotten dressed yet.

Of course, she knew me well enough to pick me apart.

"You can't, sir." She loosened her grip, her voice faltering as she spoke, "You can't just show up here again like nothing has happened."

"And what happened, exactly that you should have the gall to lay your hands on me, Fiona?"

"This is not something you can just dismiss, sir." She stated urgently as though her words were fact simply because she was older than me, backing away at a comfortable distance so that I could prop myself up on my elbows, "You can't forget it so easily like it were a mere childish prank-!"

"I am the Great Earl, Fiona." I stated just as if not more urgently as a raised a brow in her direction, thinking at that time that felt so distant now that that responds enough to win any argument, "I am the infamous villain who plagues all in Wonderland. It is in my nature to cause injury and death to all, even those foolish enough to trust the likes of-"

"Blast it all!" She cried out suddenly, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation and a new found emotion akin the pity or sorrow in her thin and wrinkled eyes, "They were like family to you! You cared for them, you can do nothing to convince me otherwise, and you killed them!"

A silence followed that single declaration.

Her words and the weight of all she tried to portray in such a small vessel somehow seemed to float in the air, despite being the elephant in the room.

But one word stuck to my mind. 'Family'.

Of course. In my dear morning, I had Nearly forgotten all about that creature, that thing, that person who called me Nea Campbell, my first name, with such as familiar smile, the ethereal smile of a child.

Perhaps, I thought, because the morning light had come, perhaps all the illusions would fade and I would see that whatever creature I brought with me was just a homunculus like so many others and not that very person I called family.

Surely I had overreacted that night. Surely those feelings I felt were just feelings and nothing more.

There were three very important questions dancing through my mind; How the hell? Who the hell? What the hell?

I had only been in the presence of whatever it was for a few short moments and three layers of hell on earth were already upon me.

I needed to meet whatever it was and and quicker than humanly possible. That's all I knew.

If he wasn't what I suspected, I would be annoyed because I gave a worthless creature like that the time of my day and the evening would probably end with his blood on the floor.

If it was who I thought he could potentially be, however.

Oddly enough, I didn't even know how I would react to that possibility and yet I still dared to set the events in motion.

With my eyes fixed upon the stone tapers of my ceiling, at last, I spoke.

"Fiona, for whatever breakfast you prepared," I declared because this was far from a question, "I want the prisoner to attend."

"...The prisoner, sir?"

"Oh, don't tell me you killed him!" I started, for a moment actually feeling some sort of dread over the possibility.

"No no no, sir," Were the words stated quickly as she was already halfway out the door, "I will see what I can do!"

And with that, she stomped away and I breathed a sigh of relief as I let myself fall back against my soft bed.

It was in this moment that I observed that Fiona was very frustrated. Disappointed with me, yes, but more than that, she was frustrated.

Normally, she would be severely punished for losing her temper or raising her voice at me, but at the moment I just could not help but be fascinated.

Overall, the current state of Wonderland's monarchy was not something that involved or in any way affected a woman like her and. She had not been tortured been tortured by a man notorious for his creative brutality for a month in a hellishly filthy cell. She had not killed since she was a mere child.

She had not done anything of these things and yet her being was lit ablaze with the fires of beautiful emotion so much so that she, a fifty three year old woman, could not even sit still like she were still youthful and hot headed.

And yet here I was, Nea Campbell, the one who had done all these things feeling like my very being was composed of cold metal and coil, like I were nothing but an observer of some humorously tragic tale.

I don't see how it was fair that Fiona got to feel everything I was supposed to feel. Perhaps if I had any feeling back then, if I had a heart to go to for guidance rather than just a mind, I would have known far better what I was supposed to do.

That's just it. I was unguided rather than misguided, contrary to popular belief. I was not some mad victim of cult abuse taking out some childish tantrums upon the world. I was unguided. I simply did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted because no one wanted to actually get off their luxury couches and tell me an actually logical unbiased opinion about the world.

Perhaps that's what adulthood was all about. After all, I was much too old to be a child.

Soon enough, she returned to tell me my order was confirmed and Eliade, the prison guard and cook would send the prisoner to the dining room as soon as breakfast was ready.

Fiona knew her place which was something I always liked about her place so she left the subject alone after her little burst of disobedience. Like a scalded dog, she put her tail between her legs and backed down. That's one thing I always liked about her. She had the ability to submit.

She soon assembled my outfit because yes, she usually dressed me like a proper female butler, which was actually not a proper thing at all but I had difficulty caring in the slightest bit.

I insisted on something simple that day. I remember declaring that to her while she rummaged through my wardrobe as I chewed on a half eaten toothpick at my leisure. I was honestly having far too careless a time. Invincibility and warm black coffee was coursing through my veins and I honestly couldn't see how anything mattered so I ordered my maid around like a brat.

What Fiona chose suited my tasted mostly.

Because my injuries were still raw and festering, and did not want to aggravate them with any overly hot garment. Instead I wore a simple grey satin coat with loose fitted sleeves and bear fur lining the collar, the sort I would always wear to the particularly fancy parties I had the desire to crash. I wore it over the blood stained bandages in hopes to feel a little bit better about my situation and it served its purpose.

And so I limped from my room wearing nothing but a coat, black trousers and bed head and proceeded down the hall.

I hadn't even bothered to put on shoes, not that I ever really did wear shoes in my own house. Old habits die hard, or so I am told. I had full faith that Fiona had mopped and swept the place spotless before my coming and that I had nothing to worry about. In addition to that, I had far too much anticipation for the coming of my guest at breakfast to have the patience to even bathe beforehand, much less put on shoes.

Plus, even if my guest was anyone special, I doubt I would need the informality of shoes. If it wasn't, my reputation would still be safe because even without shoes or even socks for that matter, the Great Earl of Wonderland was still equally terrifying.

So I rushed down my hall of velvet carpet, completely and utterly unashamed of my lack of shoes because I did not worry about such trivialities.

I was the Great Earl, after all.

Said velvet carpeted halls were, aside from beautiful and very well designed, if anything, incredibly symmetrical.

The gold and silver vine engravings I put upon the smoothest of ivory walls polished with the highest of quality polishes were done on the right wall on completely random patterns. Though the method was unorthodox, I did my best to copy the finished work by hand upon the left wall and I must say I was quite impressed with my work. Even the wife of the duke of the house of Diamonds herself complimented the walls, saying they were perfect mirrors of each other.

Don't ask why she was here. She was lonely and she just had a fight with the duke while I was feeling a bit like a kleptomaniac. Anyways, I'm not one to kiss and tell, if you know what I mean.

The tapering upon the corners was mainly done with red wood I purchased from a lowly merchant a great deal of years ago. It certainly wasn't quality wood and that single imperfection in my beautiful masterpiece would sometimes keep me up at night, but I would console myself over and over till I actually believed it that no wood was superior to any other wood, so needed have to put the house through another week of construction.

The particular pattern I chose for the bronze ceiling coated in glass, a sort of bronze mirror composed of scattered bronze of various shades to make the world below appear as though it were a paintings and far more beautiful than it actually was, coupled with black squares and rectangles made in ink overlapping each other in a particularly aesthetically pleasing manner, was done out of rebellion because many unreliable and unwanted advisors told me I should give the ceiling a checkered pattern, since it was in style at the time but I did not want my home to be like everyone else's but rather I wanted it to be special and that was the motivation that drove me to make it the bronze masterpiece it is today.

The lamps hung upon the ceiling were gold plated copy molds molded to appear as similar to my favorite wild mountain flowers as I could make them, and scented like them, to. All my favorite flowers were all the sorts that deadly poisons could be made from and small and dimly lit electric bulbs were placed were the nectar would be if they were real. They may have appeared to have been placed at completely random spots but the order of the lamps was actually binary for the entrance code of my office, should I ever forget.

Honestly, though I was the one who designed and built this place, even I find it difficult to describe the beauty of even one of the many rooms. It wasn't that they weren't beautiful, it's just that I had created them to invoke feeling in one's heart and it's very difficult for someone like me to portray emotions; It would be just as easy for me to pass on the plague through words alone.

Your little minds would reject it, every fiber of your being would fight the image like germs fighting a virus and it would just never work.

That being said, just know that my bedroom was placed strategically in the very core of my moving house, almost as though I were a worm in my own apple. I have to walk quite a long ways to make it to the main entrance to the dining room. I would only enter there because any side entrance would surely soil any dignity upon a second impression, not that I cared much what this memory in physical form thought of me.

Either I had grown soft in my time in prison or the injuries I had sustained still heavily lowered my agility. I deduced that much because I could not recall walking to the dining room ever taking quite this long before.

Honestly, I thought I could have eaten my own hand and saved myself some time. Had I placed the dining room there so that I could exercise every morning without having to leave the house? I couldn't quite recall, but most likely.

When I had finally arrived in the spacious opening that led to the dining room's twin doors, a thin layer of sweat covered my shaking limbs and I just could not quite seem to catch my breath.

I was hunched over, looking like a fool with my hands resting on my knees. Regret filled me at the thought of the creature that lay beyond those stone doors seeing me this way and thinking me anything as repulsive as human.

A blood curdling shiver ran through my body.

But I was the Great Earl. Why was I getting cold feet because someone who could potentially have known me by another name had come to my house? Why had I become so afraid of what he thought of me, whoever he was.

I chewed on my bottom lip and stamped my bare foot upon the ground as hard as I could. I paced around a bit, but not to anywhere in particular.

I knew these feelings very idiotic and childish. They should be dismissed and forgotten.

I had not seen my own reflection like this in fourteen years and I had long left the past behind me.

Nea Campbell had been lost in the waves of the passing time till only the Great Earl remained.

That's what I told myself till I actually believed it.

The stone doors were cold to the touch. I knew that long before I gripped the handles and yet when I did, the icy sensation I felt felt far more like a burn upon my nerves.

It was not I who opened the doors. If it were fully me in control in that moment, I would have turned away and ran. If it were me, I would have locked those doors and never faced my demons because I was scared, albeit unknowingly but definitely scared of what was beyond those doors.

I did not push those doors open, but rather, the Great Earl did, because only he would so arrogantly face an enemy from a past he never knew, fully believing he was prepared, that he could defeat anything, even this.

The light in the dining room blinded me for a few moments too long, but when my now clear eyes found themselves looking straight into an identical pair, the dictator, the villain, the Great Earl was no longer in control. That self inched back into the darkness that he called home while he abandoned me to lay bare and defenseless in the dim light of those innocent eyes.

Words died in my throat and I suddenly realized with great horror how unprepared I was for this.

The second thing I realized was that the marble snake legged table in said dining room that I had designed and furnished myself with money I had stolen from various sources was needlessly long and yet, in that moment, with that particular face at the their end of the twenty foot long table, I could not help but wish it was longer.

The air was lukewarm in a way that stuck to one's flesh, a dirty air, a product of a wondering draft in this vast room of exotic carpets and patterned wallpapers.

Towering windows, four on every side, watched over us, judging is, reaching out to the top of the arched ceiling like an inescapable guardian. Through the lavender drapes, all one could see was an ethereal light, shining like the sun, like an angel were right outside the glass because there was nothing but abyss and stray elements beyond this house.

Because of the light from the windows, no electricity or candles were put into this room.

Because of the gentle buzzing of the healthy engine running, no words were needed to be said.

Because of its rare use, no one came to clean nor did my soul ever really grow an attachment to this room or even acknowledge it as just another part of my home. I didn't even enjoy food enough to bring myself to feel anything but repulsion for this place.

All these things collided like unstable molecular structures, uniting and joining together.

It was all these things that never failed to make me acknowledge how truly alone I was.

I swallowed. I was thirsty. I hadn't drank any fluids in a long while, despite knowing it would aid my healing process.

It wasn't my top priority. If I had drank before facing this particular challenge, I doubt even I could have kept myself from throwing it up.

In the light of day, I beheld the creature holding my gaze.

He was real. He was truly a parasite latched onto the prime reality I comprehended, just as I was. That much I could be certain. Though all was up for interpretation, that much I could be sure of.

In the morning light, I saw differences in his physic.

For one, though his skin was pure and without blemish, he was ghastly pale. Perhaps it was some kind of side effect of being out in the gravitational storm's harmful radiation for too long, but I could not see how a single drop of blood was running through any part of him.

Though his skin appeared pure and soft, it came to my attention that the specimen before me was far from healthy. He was thin, his skin clinging to his brittle arms and cheekbones. His cheeks were sunken in and heavy bags hung under his still so bright eyes. He lacked muscle mass of any sort and yet he sat up straight and proud in the chair with not Nearly enough space in between mine.

I could see that this creature was not afraid of me and that single speck of knowledge made my blood boil in my veins.

I had requested that breakfast be prepared but nothing was on the table except a bottle of wine and a loaf of half rotten bread at my side like whoever put it here expected me to eat it. It was almost an insult.

From this distance his appearance was so small that I could have squashed him like a bug between my fingertips and yet I, the Great Earl, was afraid of the creature.

I was afraid like a child of how his gaze found mine, never once faltering. He looked at me with acceptance when he didn't even know me, expectancy even though he had no idea what I was capable of, hope even though all hope had died a long long time ago.

My chair moaned as I shifted uncomfortably. It was a very old piece of furniture, so that was to be expected.

I knew who he was. I didn't need to ask the question, and yet it still fell from my lips.

"Who are you?"

Those three words echoed through the empty spaces several tonnes back at me, I might have thought I was being mocked.

Even at my words, the creatures concentration did not falter. If anything, it grew stronger at the mere fact that I acknowledged his existence.

Why had his eyes brightened when I spoke? Why on earth did he look so pleased with himself?

"Mana..." He declared just as he had last night, sounding so utterly sure of the fact, I was suspicious he had suffered an identity crisis in recent days, "...Mana Campbell…"

That name was like nails upon a chalkboard. My nausea grew stronger at the sickly sweet nostalgia.

And yet, even though he said that name with such surety, I did not believe him all because of the simple fact that it couldn't be so. There was simply no possible way that Mana could be here.

In my heart, I knew no one from this dimension except me knew of that name and that the creature in front of me was far more real in presence than even I felt at times, so there was no way he was some kind of hologram.

Even so, I was still so very confident that one of my many burning questions would create a loophole in his story and an artificial nature would be revealed. I was so positive that even in my careful planning, I never prepared myself for the possibility of him being the true and first owner of the name he owned so confidently.

With an eyebrow raised and my chin resting in my hand, I asked yet another pointless question.

"Okay, Mana." I said, yet again disturbed at how happy me saying that name seemed to make him, "What are you, then?"

That childish tilt of the head, again. Honestly, it was almost as though he were more puppy than human.

Understanding his confusion, I elaborated.

"Are you a homunculus?" I sighed, eyes fluttering shut in exhaustion, losing sight of the enigmatic creature for a moment in hopes that he would just disappear from my presence, "Are you a shapeshifter? Are you my own hallucination?"

More of my usual sarcastic questions were queued in my mind but they were immediately dispelled and forgotten at his response.

"...Your….. Brother….?"

My eyes flew open and my focus was reinstated into a harsh glare.

My gut response was simple and instinctive; No he wasn't.

He wasn't my brother, that I knew for a fact. Honestly, other than being my mirror reflection in all but complexion, we hardly looked related at all.

As you can probably tell, the creature that called himself my brother had thrown my system into pure entropy and my cogs and coils began to run backwards. I started spouting lies mindlessly in hopes they'd suddenly become the truth if I said them enough.

It made me angry. It made me so angry, the part of my brain commonly used to make sense of things began to burn like someone had lit it ablaze, like I were a computer system overworking my memory banks.

"No," I blurted out like I had lost control of my tongue, "I don't have a brother."

"Do you truly believe that?" The person who called himself Mana spoke too softly to me and I hated it, "Do you really not remember, Nea?"

"My name is not Nea! I am the infamous Great Earl and-!"

"Really? You responded so familiarly to the name last night. Are you sure?" And his lips pulled but into an absolutely awful toothy grin that told me exactly what I needed to know: He was trying to bother me on purpose.

And then his face became composed again. His face went back to the same monotonous and gloomy expression.

He had succeeded in making me bloodthirsty, yes, but that was far from the worst part. The worst part was that it was steadily becoming more believable that he was in fact, Mana.

It was suddenly far more familiar than I would like.

An obnoxious child and his obnoxious smile as he put tags on the teacher's chair and glue in the girls hair brushes. I knew that child who was called Mana at birth, an average child who always tailed far behind my grades and physical talents even though he was supposed to be older than me.

I remember that memory but that's all that child was; A memory.

I refused to believe him. That was final.

There was just no way he could be here.

I remembered the conditions of how I got here. I remembered what the rules were and the star that brought me here was not one who should break something as important as rules.

"So," I continued to say, "Where did you come from?".

He wouldn't answer that, I thought, surely not. Surely there was no true reason that this illusion could make up to convince me that he was authentic, that we shared the same dna.

I thought I had surely beat the creature at this game when his eyes suddenly landed on the table in front of him. He was growing nervous and unsure of himself.

I thought it was because his lie was crumbling at last but then he spoke up.

If I were anything but the great Earl, I would have never heard those words, hardly even audible above the engine's buzzing but I did.

"Was I not….Supposed to come…?" Were his words.

This creature, who I will address as Mana purely for convenience and not because of actual belief, looked absolutely dejected and positively crestfallen. He was suddenly pouting miserably like as child, like he expected me to care at all.

Honestly, it was almost as though he really thought I was the same stupid and naive boy from so long ago, that I truly was still his brother, Nea Campbell.

"That was not what I asked." I stated as seriously as I could, "Where did you come from, Mana."

Why had he looked so sorrowful, I wondered, when it had been fourteen years since he had seen me. Had he not expected me to change, to mature, to become an independent person from the memories I made with him?

"...Nouvelle-Aquitaine..." Mana whispered the word into the collar of his robe but I heard, nonetheless.

Pathetic, I thought, he hadn't even moved passed the boundaries of his birthplace.

"Yes, and where is that?"

His head jerked up in a way that almost looked painful and he had the audacity to glare, a genuinely cold but childish glare, at me, the one who welcomed him into my home.

"You know where…" He hissed, "Your accent… You know full well where-!"

"Where is it, Mana?!"

He caught the warning in my voice and submitted to me.

"...France…" He whispered, "...It's in France…"

The person in front of me was scared of me and because of this, I burst out in laughter.

I had laughed at that time at the thought of thinking my own brother so lost without my presence in our birth dimension, that I was truly the best thing to ever happen to that boring and pointless lot of people.

It made me absolutely giddy thinking that my absence had actually affected people so negatively that some might come to find me.

The most historical part to me, though, was how hard the person in front of me had to work to find me. He must of had to search since the day I left to even hope to locate me.

And so, I sadistically chuckled knowing how cruelly disappointed he must have felt at finding me here, strong and healthy, far greater than he could ever hope to be and rejecting his presence because I was not a child anymore and I did not need him.

I wondered if the knowledge that he did nothing but waste his time since the moment I left taste irony and sickening like blood on his tongue.

And yet this, even this, gave me no true happiness, only a feigned and strained excitement.

Clearly fate had not been kind to this one.

"Now," Placing my fingers together like I were praying, "How did you come about discovering this place?"

"...The…. Portal…."

"The portal? How did you discover it?"

"It opened…. And I walked through….."

I thought about that for a moment. Did the Jabberwock not invite him here like she had, me? Why would she do that, since it was she who controlled passage to this magical land?

So many questions lurked Nearby but judging by this Mana's disappointing lack of intelligence, he was not one to answer any of them.

"And what, pray tell," I began, "Could possibly have made you wish to come here? Have you stumbled here on accident, or was there something you wished to do or find?"

He shifted a bit, his large and miserable brown eyes searching the surface of the table like he were looking for some kind of weapon.

"I came for Nea…" He whimpered, "I came… For you…. I thought…"

"Then you thought wrong." I corrected abruptly, my voice almost acting on its own, like it was the Great Earl talking and not truly I, "I am not Nea Campbell. I told you, I am called the infamous Great Earl."

"I worked…. I worked really hard…" Frantic words and incomprehensible statements were said, his eyes glazing over like he was about to faint, his skin growing a further shade of gray like he would disappear at any second like the ghost of the past he was, "The college was really… so very… Truly ... Hard….. Working… and ... Sacrifice…. All those faces…. Really…. Really long time… So much pain ..."

"Yes." I continued to say with that cold and sadistic smile plastered all over my face, never once considering how much these words would come back to haunt me, "And it was all wasted. All those years are gone and you can never get them back. And why? Why did they have to be spent so uselessly? Because you thought I ever needed people like you in my life. How naive. What on earth could I possibly need you for?"

And then that essence of misery and pain was snuffed out from his eyes almost as though it had never been, like it were but a figment of my imagination, and his face twisted into a feigned gleeful grin.

I hated how he did that, how he just switched from one emotion to another at the turn of a dime, like he weren't actually feeling anything and his mind was just producing robotic gestures to resemble actually real human reactions.

And I thought my cogs and coils were messed up. He definitely had more that a few screws loose in his clock, I thought to myself.

"Thank you for asking." He breathed the disgustingly polite phrase he had obviously repeated a thousand and two times over to people he didn't want to say it to, with a polite bow you only saw the most fake politicians perform, "Well, um… you see…. Uh…. I would be happy…. To perform any request you should have me do, any order wouldn't be too much, I promise…. Um….."

For one, this was possibly the strangest thing anyone had ever said to me and the pure shock I had experienced from hearing said statement was what kept me from stopping him earlier.

I held my hand up to silence his rushed rant and he obeyed, perhaps trying to prove true the first statement he stated to me.

"Stop," I uttered, still not entirely sure what exactly I just heard, "Just stop. Are you saying…. You want to be my servant?"

He nodded so violently and enthusiastically, it made me wonder if he had a spine.

"I reject that offer."

"...What…?"

A chill ran down my spine without warning. The voice sounded almost alien, too deep, to loud, too hollow to have come from the person in front of me. If he'd hadn't moved his lips to voice the word, I would have thought we were alone here.

A silence ensued.

Silence fell upon layers of increasing tension and hostility, none of which I was creating. For the first time in a long time, I could actually feel pure anger, rage not polluted by any emotion, the most concentrated form of bloodlust a human being could muster all coming from someone who had no right to feel this way towards me.

"You seem to be far more dull than I first expected," I muttered as I leaned forward, "So let me spell it out for you, Mana. I have servants of my own. I don't need them. The Great Earl doesn't need help, and yet I keep them because I like them, because they offer me entertainment and they are useful."

"B-But… but….I-I don't understand…. I just..." He muttered, his very being ringing with desperation and panic, breathless, chest heaving in silent claustrophobia, hands on the table, gripping it as if for dear life, "... I'd do anything… I could be anything…. Even if it were something minors or…. Or unimportant…. I could do it…. Surely…"

"You couldn't and you won't. It's just that simple."

"A servant, a slave…! A body shield, a scapegoat, a lab rat, a toy, a mere decoration, a spy, a tool just to be thrown away, cut me open and harvest my organs, I don't care! Surely something… Anything ...!"

And yet he still fought against against the truth. I thought him so stubborn for this'd and actually grew angry with him but perhaps that wasn't the case.

Perhaps it was I who was blind.

Perhaps it was truly I who struggled with the truth because I could not seem to hear the blatant cry for help, for someone, anyone, anything to save him.

So I chose my side and kept with the blazing flame and watched it consume all in its path till nothing remained, unaware it stole a piece of me day by day.

I untangled my fingers and pointed a single sharpened nail at his distant form.

I made sure to enunciate and speak as clearly and loudly as possible so that these words would be carved into his consciousness and that the scar would last the rest of his days so that he would never forget.

"You are not useful. You do not offer me entertainment." I smiled at the pain I knew he felt, "I do not like you. I do not know you. I do not need you, Mana Campbell."

Unbeknownst to me, I would never forget, either.

I didn't need to see his pupils dilate to the size of olives and every muscle in his body tense up like a rabid animal to know what he was feeling. The stench of a negative emotion polluted his entire frame. The very air around him shook.

It was a bit perplexing to me to see this person because, perhaps I was a bit guilty of assuming one did not change with time but I might be a bit correct in assuming so.

For one, the Mana I remembered from my childhood, a very distant and fogged memory at that, was nothing short of a perfectly normal child for the time, if not a little bored. He was healthy physically, emotionally and mentally having been raised on a Nearly abandoned French countryside. He was surrounded by people who would have a good influence on him and his future.

I frowned. I knew our darling mother would not have it any other way.

Everything was set up so that the child would have a healthy and modest life, a shimmering future like gold at his fingertips. He would go up to be strong, mature, independent, I child that common folk should be proud of. All should have been this fine and glorious way and yet here this person called Mana was, standing in front of me as living proof that something had gone very very wrong somewhere along the line.

Looking back with clearer eyes, I should have seen it.

At least I should have pitied his lack of intelligence, but instead, I was cold to him, colder than I had even been to the man who had tormented me for so long.

I felt rot in my stomach, churning and burning my flesh in a sickly sweet sensation. Nothing about meeting my brother here had brought me joy.

If anything, it took what little joy I didn't know I had.

Why was I so determined to bring him here, anyway? Why was it so important for him to know he no longer held any value to me?

What had he done to deserve the rage I had intended for others, I wondered. Why was I so keen on hurting him like this?

But I did not dwell. Surely that feeling meant nothing.

I called Fiona in from her post right outside my door.

I told her what I wished. I told her to take Mana out of this house and drop him off somewhere where the Royal Guard wouldn't immediately find him.

She suggested the slums and I agreed. She always had good ideas about these sorts of things.

When she came in, she approached Mana slowly, like she were trying to catch a feral cat. It was understandable since he appeared to be trapped in somewhat of a volatile daze and she wasn't sure what would set him off.

Fiona was gentle, ushering him along like she were leading a small child to bed.

She probably heard our conversation and took pity on him, knowing it was the least she could do for a guest at my moving house.

I knew I would get lectured but I could not bring myself to care.

It is true. I am a bit sadistic in my own way. The truth is out, it is just as I say, but before you start pinning me down with slang terms and stereotypes you've heard of and grown to fear in movies, allow me to clarify.

I am a sadist. It is true that I cause pain in others voluntarily quite often, but it is not because I get some kind of sick or disturbed pleasure from it and it's certainly and most definitely not because I wish to see people die.

I don't mind it, but I do not desire it. It is rightfully boring.

To address the first point, I see no point in such disgusting matters in life unless profitable to one's current goals. Even then, it's more like a currency, like wretched precious gold as a means of getting what you want. I have neither desire nor satisfaction in it since it is worthless and shameful, just like crying when you are sad.

The second accusation is easily debunked. I don't like seeing people die. I'm not a cruel person. I'm not insane. I am not evil. I am, however, a sadist and I hope by the end of the night you will learn to tell the difference between the two.

A sadist's logic is simple. It is this overwhelming desire to see someone weak, too see the strong at eye level, to watch as a soul so like your own molds and groans in many various reactions.

It's like having the same boring room with the same yellow light bulb giving the same yellow light to the room. The light is annoying and it's reparative and ugly existence is grading on your nerves. You desire change.

So what do you do?

Do you turn off the light? No, then you would be blind in the comfort of your own home. That would be inconvenient because you wouldn't be able to get any of your very important work done.

So what do you do instead?

Rather, you purchase same dyed light bulbs, maybe some color changing light bulbs, to brighten your day. Now sharp royal blues collided with cherry reds and it makes you positively ecstatic. It's perfect, just as you wanted it.

People are the same. You don't want them to die because then there is nothing. After that, they are boring useless toys. It's quite light a room without a light bulb in that sense.

And no, you don't move away to a different house. Every house has the same light bulbs and the fact that you even entered the first house meant you chose it for better or for worse.

Rather, the sadist desires to see different sides off a person under their own control that the subject would never otherwise show. You have to force it, even if it means making them weak and reliant on you with your own two hands.

In another sense, you could compare people to fruit with a bitter skin like plums or grapefruit. You know the sort and I think I might be safe in assuming you know them quite well.

Grapefruits and plums are sweet lovely delicacies but in order to get that taste, that sweet flavor, that juice to quench your cravings, you must peel off the skin.

I may be a sadist and rightfully called evil in the eyes of the world and society because of the things I have done but one can not call me the bad fruit for that quality about me.

So I did not hate Mana because I was evil or a sadist. I didn't even care enough about this illusion I called my twin brother from childhood to say I hated him.

He meant nothing to me. Absolutely nothing.

He had no value and yet he assumed he did. He was like a stone thinking himself gold and all I wanted to do was cast him into a lake.

I felt nothing but a numb buzz like some sort of flatline in my head and heart as I watched her lead the brother I had not seen in fourteen years out the large door frames Gently.

For a moment, I began to wonder things like why the hair as black as night that flowed in the draft was kept so long. Was it fashionable, now? What could possibly have influenced him to make that decision?

I thought I saw something akin to a scar on his forehead. I knew for certain that wasn't there before. How did he get it? Was it an accident or did he get in some sort of fight?

Why did he turn out this way?

Why was he so childish in nature when he should have been an adult?

All these questions lurked but only one stuck with me.

I only retained enough courage to imply the question on the tip of my tongue but I feared the answer.

And yet I still asked and I think it was then when things began to change.

The pair of footsteps tapped against the carpet and the marble floor underNeath like the dulled sound of seconds passing on a clock.

I took a deep breath simply because I did not think I could tolerate this question remaining unanswered, despite my fear.

My brother and my most prized maid were halfway out the door when my voice finally echoed once more through the empty spaces.

"Honestly," I commented with my back to the one I spoke, the pair stopping at the sound of my voice, "Why would you come find me of all people. Mother dearest always loved you best, so you should have stayed with her."

I didn't laugh. The Great Earl laughed.

It was a cold hollow laugh not at Mana's expense, but at mine. He was laughing at me and the child I was. He was laughing at my pain as he drove away the only person who claimed to care about me.

But to my surprise, the Great Earl's laughter was joined by another, far more bitter laughter, dry from lack of liquids.

Mana laughed with him in almost perfect unison.

And that's when my brother proceeded to speak so freely one might think he was reciting poetry. He spoke so true to the Mana in my memories, it was horrifying and yet so oddly beautiful that my ears were enslaved to listen and my heart chained down to feel the full impact of his words.

I had no choice and yet, for the first time in a long time, I felt something.

"The day I left that dimension…."

"...Was the day mother passed away…"

Not even then.

Not even then did I close my ears when I needed to most.

My heart took the blow and blood flooded my framework till all was stained red but it was the most color I retained in such a long time.

I almost didn't recognize it.

The color of those chrysanthemums mother adored so much.

The truth that the woman that loved flowers and green tea, kittens and puppies, the brightest smiles and the darkest frowns, was taken from this world was all I could see.

"It was your name she said in the end… She was asking for help and she called for you, not me… When you abandoned her like she was nothing!"

"... I don't understand… You left her just like he did….!"

I knew he was crying. I heard the droplets of saltwater falling down his thin cheeks.

"You are no different from father...!"

"You are selfish…. and vile…. just like he was!"

"And if…. And if you ever think otherwise, you're wrong!"

"But you were right about one thing…."

"This…. This infamous Great Earl doesn't need me…."

"But you, Nea Campbell,"

"Do."

And with those final words, he was gone.


	4. Chapter IV Part I

Chapter III

Uncertainty made up their dreams but it was funny how uncertainty was a friend to children like them but the worst nemesis to adults. But because the passage of time was cruel and all things lucky would grow into adulthood, the battles were fought fair and square and the adults won the war and the dreams were chased away to a distant sunrise.

The world now sought growth and change and at no steady pace. No one was going to wait for those too slow to catch up. This was no longer a world for children but a world for the anxious and wary.

But one thing the modern youth, in all their colleges and academies; in all their textbooks and ancient scrolls; could not seem to wrap their heads around was that the world was round and that no matter how fast they ran and pushed the circuits of the earth to exhaustion, they could never sprout wings to fly into a brighter future and would always end up right back where they started, square one.

Sitting still was alright. A journey could wait for its turn in another day.

But had that day come yet?

Was this truly the adventure they had sought or had time done to them the same thing it had done to all the rest of the adults?

What was the catalyst that changed their innocent forms that felt too much and yet felt too little, who slept for too long and yet never truly saw rest?

Clips and sequences. Essences of frames so delicately placed, an yet still falling short of the full picture. Knowledge and evidence tickling the senses, and yet the only half truth possessed ran on a forced belief the way a train, metal found naturally in the veins of the earth are cut from their place and forced to run on an artificial fuel upon a chosen path as that same beautiful earth now bleeds out and will evidently die.

Clips and sequences from times long past passed his eyes, wide and thirsty for the image like those of an innocent child. Though he was an adult now and he had seen enough sin to forevermark his vision jaded, he kept his sight pure.

His heart longed for these sequences and clips and yet never once did he label any of them as good or bad, lying or honest, innocent or vile. That was an adult's way of seeing the world, to demonize the unknown and curse what he didn't know and yet he did not. When he took his own instinctive opinion out of all that surrounded him, all that he perceived and all that was, he soon found that things became alive.

The beauty that consumed his world and being like the gentle touch of a fire was ethereal to his child-like eyes.

His only wish was that that the world would learn to see, hear, feel and touch like he did.

Then, perhaps things would be better.

Unlike most college students, or the general French populous in the current times of war and distaste, Mana Campbell, a young man from the country actually filled his head with thoughts of how to save everyone from the disease that plagued their weary hearts and not to just relieve oppression from one class of society.

He knew that most in the movement that spread amongst the angry masses living on the street like a wildfire had good intentions and just wanted to see poverty lifted from those masses, but Mana had seen what both poverty and wealth did to men of every kind and he had quickly learned that neither killers left survivors, much less reap happiness in this life.

They fought for happiness, but all they would win for their efforts and journeyed through uprisings and turmoils, should they succeed, was wealth; a volatile and addictive disease, a monster capable of locking a man out of heaven.

At the very least in poverty, in misery, in turmoil, there was something to be worked for, something to be gained, hope and dreams that, one day, this wretched earthly existence could improve.

In wealth, it was over. The race was won, the journey done. The end of the path of incomplete ecstasy, so close and yet so far, was a dead end and to proceed would be to lead one's heart into the uncharted wilderness, into pure entropy.

In wealth, the peak of society has already been reached, the mountain climbed and all that was left past the pinnacle was the highest of cliffs leading straight back to square one; A fall from grace to say the least.

The only way things could get better, improve, further evolve into the heaven strived for, is if the ticket to the golden gates of heaven was won and in the mad thirst for purpose, most rushed the journey to the speed of the bullet to the skull.

Then where were the good intentions? Where were was the drive in death?

They vanished, disappearing as though they never were.

The evolution of forms composed of innocent intentions to creatures of hate and greed was completed.

The life cycle ran its course.

It was over and all that wasft were three burning questions;

What on earth? Who on earth? How on earth?

These questions put Mana threw three levels of earth.

What was the purpose for striving for the best this world could offer if the journey left you broken with a revolver in a gloved hand and your valued brains scattered upon the wooden floorboards?

Why couldn't you be content with what you had back then? Why did you have to seek adventure? Why did you have to leave them? Why did you have to change?

What's wrong with you?

What's wrong with me?

What's wrong with this species?

But France, his birthplace and home was long gone now. It could no longer touch him where he had gone away to. He no longer had to fear when the very fabric of reality separated them like leagues of oceans separating foreign lands.

The soil under his bare feet was foreign soil and all that was built upon it was trying its very hardest to be different from the home he knew his entire life.

The first true difference Mana noticed was that, apparently, he couldn't trust people so he found that he had no way of knowing if Fiona was her actual name or just some bizarre title she made up for herself to estranged herself from all those who still dared to care about her.

The woman, the old woman who called herself Fiona, said this place was called the slums, or something. By the name, he had assumed it was the poorest section in this unusual city. What he saw in the area he was now banished to only confirmed it.

Structure-wise, it was quite similar to the rest of the city. The style in which this city was built was quite similar to early gothic styles if the usually darkly coloured limestone were replaced with gold plated structures and red bricks.

Here, in what appeared to be the center of this region, he saw that it was once that way but, somewhere along the lines, those overly fancy decorations stopped being paid for by whoever was in charge many years ago.

The portal in the bottom of the wretched place that wretched person called a 'Moving House' was no different from the one he saw last night in the top of that cathedral place where he followed that wretched person.

No light filled his vision and he found himself stranded cold and alone in a shadow laden valley of vague concrete structures, rough and cold to the touch.

He was not an animal. He was not nocturnal, so the steadily dimming sunset over the horizon, so similar to the ones he witnessed at home, brought him little comfort.

Perhaps it was childish of him, but since Nea abandoned their home, Mana found that the dark seemed to give him serious anxiety.

Mana knew of things that lurked in the unknown, unseen things, unusual things. They frightened him much in the same way monsters hiding in the dark empty spaces of a room frightened a scared child. Any exposed skin made him feel far more vulnerable than he would like, and yet he began to get paranoid that tiny invisible bugs were crawling all over him under his clothes.

It did him no good to be alone. His very thoughts were weaponized to hurt him.

As soon as that woman called Fiona pushed him through the portal, the second thing he noticed was that there were no electric lights, not a single glass bulb glittering like a star in midday to be seen. This sharply contrasted his original view of the city that was lit up everywhere by many multicolored lights, one might think it was Christmas day. Even France had streetlamps lining the pathways, even the poorest of sects had some electricity, but this haunting place had nothing, neither sign of life or death.

Honestly, it felt haunted, and being someone who had a strong belief in ghosts, that spelled only trouble for his weak, brittle, and already far too troubled heart.

The familiar sound of an electric zap, energy losing its temperature, heat fading, a dimming of the general surroundings and a whispered goodbye from the woman who called herself Fiona indicated the closing of the portal that dropped him off in this awful place and the young man quickly found his overpowering and yet so familiar loneliness turning his insides to ice like it were suddenly the climax of the winter season.

It might as well have been, since mountain falls were much much colder than country winters any day. He had never personally been to anything that could be called a mountain, but he had heard rumors from several reliable sources.

Perhaps it was his sheltered upbringing that caused him to hate any alien environment, but the entire dimly lit and completely abandoned world felt quite wrong. Mana had never realized how used to artificial light or the promise of light when the sun had gone he was until he took his first few steps in this almost dreamlike environment.

His overall opinion, not that it really mattered or that he really enjoyed sharing, was that this almost dreamlike place was chilling in appearance, humbling in nature, confusing in actuality.

One, he had no idea where he was or what he was going to find here. He could easily find death or enslavement if he wasn't careful.

Two, he had no idea where he was or what he was going to find here. This world was unfamiliar to him and he felt like a small child once again.

Three, he had no idea where he was or what he would find here. He had no money, nothing of value on him to trade, no knowledge of the people, no idea if he could find employment, no place to stay, no food, no water, and certainly no where he could hope to go to find any of these very precious things.

Honestly, if it hadn't been such an awful situation, he should brought some kind of gold or precious gems he never had any use for just in case this situation went south on him.

It more or less did go south on him, to say the least. But that did not spam for his determination, because the young man still had no intention of giving up on the goal he had worked fourteen years for.

He was just despairing his lack of options in reaching that goal.

If anything, he had numerous fully functional organs inside his body and thick black hair to act as reasonable sutures, along with a reasonable knowledge of sewing, but he didn't think he could find a clean metal object to cut himself open with.

It wasn't as though he needed his kidney but he didn't know if anyone even considered organs valuable or even sellable here. For all he knew, they could run on photosynthesis like a plant would. Then he would be truly in danger but perhaps not as far as good went. Vegetables were high on vital vitamins, according to his mother.

Yes, it would technically be a form of murder and cannibalism but he didn't even know if these hypothetical plant people had souls he should be concerned about and it was a desperate situation.

Unfortunately, he had never been much of a hunter. He was far too clumsy with weapons of sport and never actually had the heart to make the kill.

Oh well. If it really got really that bad, he could eat his own kidney. He didn't know if that would be beneficial to his health, though. Perhaps it didn't master if it was only a temporary fix to a temporary issue.

But it still didn't improve his mood in the slightest. He still had the bitter taste of indescribable taste, knowing that if he dwelled on the subject, he might drown in those awful feelings.

Irritation ran through the young man in a rather distasteful thrill, something akin to a sugar rush except no pleasant feeling backed it up.

Knowing no one was around, he began to shamelessly stomp his feet against the ground, muttering less than tame curses under his tired breath.

Since he was very young, around seven or so and able to throw childish tantrums, he had held the habit of leaping up gracefully and stomping his feet one after another in a rather rhythmic way very similar to a horse prancing or an Irish, except with far more spirit, much less posture and much much less joy in the action.

At first, those he knew tried to break the habit for him, but as the years went by, their determination faded but his habit stood strong and frequent as ever.

He might never talk about it, but Mana Campbell was forced into adult situations at far too young an age so he was never given the chance to mature out of his childish exoskeleton. This meant for him that the majority of his habits from childhood not only stayed but were sewn with golden thread into his adult being.

That being said, the first thing he did when things got hard was stomp on the ground, fists and jaw clenched so tightly, he thought he might chip a bone.

"Nue, you dastardly cowardly vile…. !" Mana growled under his breath, talking so quickly he began to take shape intakes of breath at the ends of his sentences, "You son of a….. Really… Really... Really good woman….. !"

He could never use that curse with a clear conscious. Call it clinging to the past if you wanted to.

You would probably be right, anyway.

And with one last stomp on the ground with both feet, his feet stinging with the impact, he turned to the general direction he remembered the portal being and jabbed a finger like that wretched person had stayed to watch him wither away in pain, declared as loudly as he could, "How dare you, honestly… !".

He expected this much. He expected that something strange would happen when he crossed over the dimension but having his efforts and all he had been through reduced to some child's play did nothing but put his blood just below boiling point.

Perhaps it was childish. Perhaps he should have grown a thicker skin. Perhaps he shouldn't have snapped the way he did but fourteen years worth of agony just for the sake of finding the one person he placed above all of his potential may have caused him to be that much more of a brat.

The world could laugh.

His words echoed back several times in a sharp manner, each word a perfect and clear mimic, almost painful to his ears and half exhausted mind. He wrinkled his nose in pain as a hand flew up to clutch his temple.

The storm in his heart was quelled and all was returned to that awful stalemate.

He would have, could have, should have felt something, and yet he didn't. He didn't feel anything but empty. He hung in the balance of an awful disinterested solution, only stable enough to keep him alive even if every second he wanted to die.

Almost painful, but not quite there yet.

Things had been that way for him for a long while; Each feeling so close to something and yet returning to that same numbness of spirit, mind and body in the last seconds before completely forgotten.

Mana sighed in defeat as his anger vanished.

The part he hated more than anything, more than all he lacked and all he would never gain, more than the look in his brother's eyes and the smile on his face, more than what he had become and all that he could have been, more than the memory of his mother or the knowledge of the gap she left, more than his own uselessness and retardation, more than all that was and all that is, was that all this pain and sorrow brought him nothing but an empty stagnant feeling because no matter how much he tried, he could not hate Nea.

He could not, did not and would never truly hate his brother.

It was just that simple, reduced to the smallest equation down to that simple fact in life.

He could not hate Nea because Nea was all he had left in this world of clips and sequences that passed him by before he had a chance to grasp what it all meant.

Sequences and clips gushed into his empty mind like a river flowing to the sea. So vivid, water flowing through the familiar viens created from years of erosion.

Perhaps the only reason God allowed that event from so long ago to happen was because he knew just how angry Mana would become, and how the goal he had treasured for fourteen long years would be forgotten.

Brat.

That's what that uncle of theirs called him.

They were about five when he last visited. He didn't visit for any reason other than to see the children of his sister in law's children. He was not a very kind man since he lost his leg to an infection.

He stayed in their house for a total of two weeks in the guest room upstairs, which was right next to his and Nea's room. It was filled with cobwebs, rats and filth but he never complained which led to Nea and Mana believing he didn't actually sleep in that room and, instead left in the night to fight crime as a gun slinging rogue in the big city.

They didn't really see anybody new often, perhaps every year, so when they came across someone, they would often find themselves being impolitely nosy and prying. They were just silly children so they didn't know better but they often found themselves making their uncle uncomfortable and being, overall, very rude.

Mana confessed, he was probably the most guilty of the crime.

The last time he did anything so childlike was the time the took it too far and he wandered into his uncle's room.

He was just curious but he really should have known better.

His uncle was out with his mother that day, and he just wanted to know what his uncle kept in the large leather bag the size of him in the dusty corner in the room.

There wasn't anything interesting. Just clothing, money and a few very sharp knives Mana knew better not to touch.

The only thing he saw that was significant was a small photographs framed in an oval golden frame of a woman with a beautiful smile holding an equally lovely infant.

It was a small picture and he had always been a very clumsy child, so, surely enough, his butter fingers slipped and dropped it. The picture hit the floor and the glass covering the photograph shattered down the middle.

He was frightened because just then, he heard his mother and uncle come in through the front door.

Mana put it back into the bag and ran back into his room and pretended to study.

He thought everything would have been find after that but that night, their uncle called him and Mana into the living room, sat them both down on the floor and asked them, with the picture in hand, who had been in his room.

Their uncle told them that this was the only picture he had of his deceased wife and child and it was very important to him that he knew who broke it.

He was a frightening man. Mana thought he was justified to be scared, so he thought it would be best to keep quiet.

But as you already learned, he was never good at doing what he knew to be right.

So, fearing some kind of punishment, he simply said in a very quiet voice that Nea had broken the picture.

He regretted it immediately but he wasn't quite sure how to take it back.

Nea denied it fervently as he always did but their uncle didn't believe him, saying that he was a disobedient child all his life and that he should have seen it coming.

That was the first time Mana had ever seen Nea look so scared. It was odd. Mana had only ever seen him look strong and far too mature for his age. Perhaps in his childish mind, he thought Nea could somehow take it but now he was proven wrong by the look of fear and betrayal in his eyes.

Mana was kicked out of the room, but his body stopped working so he did not move past the door. Perhaps he was too scared to move so he was a frozen audience to the unfolding punishment his uncle had in store.

Through the glass door, he watched his uncle beat Nea violently with a blunt object.

Somehow he was sure having to watch for the first time his brother cry like a helpless child was far worse a punishment than he thought he would get if he simply pretended to be like the much less retarded people in this world and told the truth.

He was disgusted, shameful and weighed down with guilt.

For the first few months after, it was all that he could think about and it gave him sleeping problems.

To think he, a five year old boy, was capable of committing such an awful action horrified him.

It was a guilt that heavily weighed upon his small mind and heart and he just didn't know what to possibly do to get rid of it. Even with all his imagination in childhood years, he just could never imagine a world, universe or dimension where either Nea or God could forgive him for what he did. Every time he tried to move on from past mistakes, he just saw the raw fear in his brother's eyes and then he found himself right back at square one.

Perhaps it was silly but, even now, he still felt the sting of the guilt and the knowledge of the awful person he was, was currently band would contiNue to be in the days to come.

It was a bitter truth and yet he swallowed all of it.

His anger was all but gone now, the rose gone because its roots were erased.

Perhaps, Mana Campbell thought, perhaps, if Mana was that same awful person, Nea had every right to demean and belittle him and all he had been through.

Perhaps this was God's inescapable judgment. Perhaps, rather than being the unfairness of life, this was good and exactly what he deserved.

Honestly, it may be hard to believe but judgment was far superior to no judgment at all. Leagues better. Millions of leagues better, actually.

Guilt was an infection of the spirit that can only be healed with forgiveness and judgment. When Nea vanished without a trace, Mana lost hope of ever curing that infection. When everyone he knew told him that Nea was gone forever, dead in some ditch somewhere, half eaten by wolves, he thought he might be sick forever and the infection would be left to fester forever till, alas, it killed him.

Things were different no.

In his rage and confusion, he was blinded to the wonderful and glorious fact that all those people that had spoken to him so surely over the past fourteen years were wrong. Nea was not dead. He wasn't even sick. He looked to be quite a healthy and accomplished person.

Warmth filled his heart that had grown so used to cold.

He was happy. He was overjoyed that Nea was healthy, even happy here, wherever here was. He was eating well, enjoying the luxury of a large house, working for himself and no one else, having real live maids he actually liked, and overall living.

That was all that mattered to Mana.

Nea being alive. Perhaps Mana was hated by him but those feelings could never be returned. It was just as simple as addition that he could never truly hate Nea for anything.

So what if he didn't need him. It wasn't as though he was very useful.

Infact, looking back, everything Nea had said was completely true.

His anger had made him temporarily mad, he could not see how truly blessed he was, that every prayer was answered in the most wonderful and vivid way. If it weren't for the obvious reality, he would have thought he was surely dreaming.

With a whispered thank you to heaven, Mana Campbell soon found himself smiling again.

This was anything but a bitter and harsh reality that he faced. Rather, this world was sweet and kind. The coming night no longer frightened him like it should but rather it made his very heart leap for joy. All hate and repulsion he once felt vanished in the blink of an eye. It was soon replaced with a strong, unusual, unyielding, and child-like love.

If this land of magic and mystery, science and superstition, allowed Nea Campbell to live a happy and healthy life, how could it be anything but wonderful, he wondered.

How, indeed. This was certainly a land of wonder.

It was then that, alas, the young man finally found his resolve strong as the steel of a knight's blade and made his decision.

He had done it before, he would do it again. Surely he would not face worse hardships than he already had been through. He would find Nea no matter what it took, be it both his kidneys or one of his lungs. He would find him and try again. Even if he didn't need him for any reason, perhaps Mana could be selfish and locate him anyway.

Because, in the end, he truly was all he had left.

He would find him and he would use whatever tools God gave him in this deserted area to find him. That being said, he summoned all the courage inside him and began to investigate the area to search for those tools.

There was once a well here. It was oddly primitive but judging by the ware and faring in the rope that held the bucket, it was all that the occupants of this area had.

Some of the marks were new, judging by the freshly exposed string and contained heat from the friction. In some ways, that made him hopeful, but in other ways, it frightened him.

He could find that whatever occupants were friendly kind hearted folk and would, perhaps inform him of what was going on in this land. On the other hand, they could be awful beasts, cannibals who feast on human flesh.

Mana felt fear at the idea, even though knowing that the lack of human remains in the area meant that that was unlikely.

The evidence that this well was built by inexperienced hands, however, gave him hope to believe in the latter.

He was placed in a fork in a road, circular clearing that broke off into three shadow laden paths, guarded by tall walls of concrete. The place was filthy, dirt and mold caked to everything but it was almost evenly place, like the place had been sweeper or cleaned recently. In some of the dust, he even saw several scattered shapes of what appeared to be a child's footprint.

He knelt down.

A child, he thought with his finger a striking the dust to further examine clues, how interesting.

These marks were new, perhaps three days old. They were not hurried but rather looked as though, by the way the marks were blurred at the edges, that the children were marching one by one.

He stood up and began to scan the ground to trace the vague child footsteps to what appeared to be the middle concrete tunnel.

In any case, it appeared to him that this environment was, at least, favorable to children, so that meant it would be only mildly difficult for someone like him to dwell in.

The doubt that they might just be very short people crept into his mind, a doubt quite determined to ruins his day but he silenced it that the marks were made by small and also underdeveloped feet.

To his knowledge, those Chinese women that got their feet bound as a sign of beauty couldn't walk, much less march, so the only possibility he could think of was children.

Perhaps he had forgotten something else but he would dare to trust his own mind this once simply because it was the only one he could really rely on for any advice at all right now.

And with all these vivid thoughts and sideways justifications swirling around like a swarm of flies inside the recesses of his skull, Mana was quick to realize that he still had yet to budge.

With that thought, he forced his feet into taking steady steps forward.

To say he wasn't completely terrified would be a lie.

Luckily, he was never one to tell a lie.

The pure darkness of the tunnel was hardly a change from the night that had come upon this abandon valley of many shades of grey. His tired eyes did not need to adjust nor did he need to reach his arms out and grope around to know where he was going.

It was a straight path and all he had to do to get through it was walk and yet, for reasons he was not quite sure of, the simple lack of light that his human eyes could perceive had an unusual effect on him physically. He had not been touched, infected or hypnotized by any form of spirit and yet the sure cold seeping into his being the same way water crept upon and dragged a ship with a leak to its destruction at the bottom of the ocean told him otherwise.

It was almost as though the lack of harm caused his muscles to stiffen like clay overtime and his joints to stiffen like they had been overtaken by rust.

His flesh turned to a suffocating leather covering. It almost seemed too easy to remove it.

He felt his bones, the muscles and cartilage that made up hisd given earthly vessel but as a separate entity from his being.

He felt the body he was given control of the same way one feels the clothes they wear but it is not who they are. It's just a shell, it's just a boat on the ocean to keep them afloat even though they are naturally water creatures, it's just a means of communicating and connecting with the world around them: Despite this, it's still not who they are.

What they truly are is a soul; The energy of life given a unique structure.

In the empty space, the suffocating concrete walls around Mana seemed to fade.

He was not moving and yet he was not still.

He screamed and yet he was silent.

He was nothing and yet something at the same time.

In that tunnel, all vanished from sight and Mana felt with the soul inside him.

The sensation was real and yet distant.

It drove him to the edge, being relentlessly taunted by the flavor, sight and smell of a feeling sweeter than sugar that all nature sang in a choir that he could never reach.

Sometimes, he felt like was going mad.

Sometimes he just grew so exhausted of the mundane flat line of a feeling he never felt.

All he wanted was to feel.

All he wanted was to be real.

All he wanted was to be alive again.

But the truly bitter part of it was that he didn't know how much longer he could wait.

Suddenly, a sound flooded Mana's consciousness. The dream faded and the disorientation of scientific laws and self proclaimed truths of the world once again took their throne. His eyes flew open and he found himself standing still as stone, taking in the image of a much larger city street illuminated by the light of a crescent moon.

He had no way of knowing where the other two paths led but this one led his straight to where the road broke off into two separate roads running straight to east to west as far as the eye can see, lining what appeared to be a very average looking city street.

It was almost sickeningly familiar. If it weren't for the alien language the signs and shop names were written in, he would have thought Nea had sent him right back to France somehow. The bitterness faded and he took a step forward.

He became a child again, losing fourteen years in an instant, in this sort of environment where he knew neither how to read or right, where he was, how this world worked, what or who he would find.

It was amusing how easily maturity and its delicate nature could fall away.

The prime difference he noticed from the city streets in France was the excessive use of concrete. No tapering, no patterns, no emblems, no separate use of materials, no sign of love, no difference in height, no specialized width, just an endless stream of various large structures with smooth concrete walls like all the color and feeling had been sapped from the world, leaving behind only empty husks and skeletons of what once was. Perhaps it was cheaper and more efficient as a building material but Mana personally thought bricks or colored limestone showed far more spirit and the care placed into the architecture.

Honestly, he might just despise living in such a dull and miserable. He might just prefer death over being trapped somewhere like this.

It reflected his own heart in a number of ways but he chose not to dwell any longer on that prospect. He wanted to change that fact he knew so well as soon as possible and any further entrapment of the agony he felt day by day would do nothing but hinder his journey.

There was no sign of a carriage making its way across the road and yet despite this, there was a separation between the sidewalk and the road.

Perhaps it was just a remnants from a much richer time, he thought, but that didn't explain the lack of any semblance of ware or water erosion. According to his eyes, the road looked quite new.

But then Mana remembered suddenly and scolded himself. In his observations, he had almost entirely forgotten about the child's footsteps he was following.

It wouldn't be proper to stay out here in the cold. The breath he breathed turned into a pure white mist and the tips of his fingers and nose were turning red. He wasn't in any actual discomfort but if he stayed out any longer, he might catch as cold of some sort and he couldn't have that.

He had a great deal of things to do, after all.

Unfortunately, that area was far more exposed to air, blowing away the dust and dirt till all that was left was an even layer of filth, so it would be hard to track someone in this area.

He searched around, not moving from where his foot were rooted but scanning the area with his eyes, but disappointment began to fill his stomach when, much to his sadness, he couldn't find a single sign of human life.

Mana was about to give up the search with an enraged stomp upon the concrete earth when a sound was made.

The sound of some sort of skin scraping against rough stone in a swift and forced motion.

The only reason why this struck the young man as relevant was simply because he certainly hadn't made that sound, rather it came from several yards directly to his left.

For a brief moment, rather than any sort of fear, hope filled his heart.

In that brief second, he jerked his body around. If he had just waited one more heartbeat, he would have thought the sound was his imagination and he would have missed the form of a fleeing child. If he had missed that, perhaps things would have been different, but he didn't.

Just a single clip, just a single sequence of a small form clothed in blood red only to disappear behind a building. Just a second of color in this world of ashen grey but it was enough.

He saw the child running and, without even thinking, like he had trained for this his entire life, he took off towards it.

A single burst of adrenaline in his veins blasted his heart rate and sent him sprinting at full speed down the street. He wasn't sure what he had planned or what he would do when he caught the person, all he knew was that he had to find the child, whoever it was.

"Hey! Wait!" He cried out as he sprinted down the corner only to find an equally bland but one way dead end road between a rock cliff and a concrete wall, leading straight to who knows where, but right in front of him was the child in red so he ran with all his strength, "Oh, goodness, please wait!"

But the child did not stop, but rather just run all the faster. The child was fast, quite a bit faster than he remembered children being, actually. For a brief second, Mana thought he might lose the child along with any chance of knowing where he was or how this place worked.

His legs began to fail him as exhaustion began to consume his body, despite the fact that his spirit still wished to move forward.

Mana truly lost hope and began to slow his pace, knowing there was no way he could catch the child.

That was, of course, after a soft thump and a rather shrill yelp, he looked up from his position of rest to see that the child had fallen, it's small form sprawled out on the concrete road, flat on its face.

It's wide red cape must have gotten wrapped around its legs and tripped the dear thing, judging by how its darkly skinned arms struggled to push itself back up. It's head was slumped down, speaking words of the pain it was in and messy auburn hair fell down the nape of its neck and it's small but shaking shoulders.

What his thought process was in that moment was a continual stream of declarations of self hatred.

I am so retarded, he thought, I always do this.

He always messed everything up like this and he despised it.

A sudden wave of guilt overtook him as he rushed forward yet again.

His feet were heavy against the ground like gravity had suddenly strengthened and the silence of this world of darkness was beginning to grate upon his ears.

"Oh no!" Mana said frantically as he jogged over to the child's side at a steady pace, kneeling down and reaching a shaking hand out in order to help it up, "Are you alright…. ? I should not have chased you like I had! I am so very sorry… !"

That particular movement had been practiced so many times over in his years that it became instinctive and he hardly even noticed anymore. Mana didn't pay attention to the suspicious situation or what could have happened and he played for it, or at least he would have if he even comprehended feeling anymore.

The first thing he noticed when he reached out his hand was a sharp almost inhuman hiss and his reached out hand being trapped in place. He thought that suspicious and dared to look down.

It took him a solid ten seconds, not that his mind was in any state to properly count passing time, to comprehend what he was seeing.

He found it hard to believe, himself but it appeared to be that the child in front of him was biting him, shimmering white teeth sharp like those of a cat biting into his fingers and piercing the flesh, crimson blood dying the lips red.

Oddly enough, what surprised him the most was the child's face which, though youthful, large purple eyes and pink cheeks, told him easily enough that this child was in fact, a female.

Nonetheless, even though there was no physical pain, he instinctively pulled his hand away and the child, a young girl actually, let go easily enough, scrambling back four or so yards away on all fours like an animal.

Of course, his gaze lingered on the child's eyes crazed with fury but it was stolen shortly after by the large bite mark in his hand and the blood that spilled forth. Stitches would be needed, or at least some kind of balm to aid the healing process and keep away infection.

A resurfacing of a memory reminded him that he had some of a balm his mother had made him for his birthday two or so years ago with that very purpose but that was not the issue. The true issue was his treatment of this girl.

It was a shocking experience and he was not quite sure what to do at first.

Not having expected this from any civilized human being and certainly not a child looking no older than seven or eight, the young man reassured himself that this was an alien civilization so perhaps it was him who had done something very wrong. He had chased the child, after all.

That being said, Mana prepared his apology.

The girl seemed to be trying to scramble back further, but was failing despite the fact that nothing was behind her, her entire body tensing up like a cat. Mana thought it all seemed quite odd, but he steeled himself.

"I'm sorry. Did I frighten you?" He whispered, his hand stretched out like he were trying to ease the fears of a feral cat and beckon it forward.

"No!"

That was not the response he expected. If he hadn't seen her speak, he wouldn't have believed the brunette child had responded to him with actually human words.

In one quick motion, he saw her slam her palms against the ground and pushed herself to a standing position.

"You don' frighten' me," She screamed almost mockingly at him, stray drops of saliva flying everywhere, with a foul swoop of her hand, which held some very sharp claws, "And yer 'alf baked mind games nevr' will!"

Mind games? Somehow that was the least of his worries.

Odd accent, he thought with a raised brow.

She was much taller than he thought she would be. Her baby face confused him so perhaps she was nine or ten. Her limbs were slender but strong, her movements swift and tanned skin not without a few scars and bruises. The marks were like medals of honour, speaking stories and legends of how much more experienced this ten year old was in combat than he, a college student from the country, would probably ever be.

In a kneeling position, already, Mana suddenly and quickly found his concern turning to intimidation as the girl towered over him at full night, as she was clearly no normal girl and could probably break him in half if she wanted to.

Perhaps he really had made a mistake and perhaps it was just really stupid for him to follows her.

But Mana, a young man of one and twenty, could only lower his head in shame with a whispered 'Oh no' like he had actually intended to get this kind of reaction from her.

It was only then that he noticed he had kept his hand outstretched the entirety of the time and immediately retracted it.

But the girl was not done yet.

"Oi! Now don' go playin' all girly like on me! Ya can't even preten' ta be anythin' but rotten' even if ya tried!" She screamed with just as much if not more intensity, looking more and more like his mother when she was fit of fury than he would like, "Wha' you come ou' ere for, ay?! Come ta' silence may, ay?! Come ta take ol' Robin's life so she won' spill all tose nasty secrets, 'ave ya?! Ay?!"

Mana suddenly came to the realization that the courage he had amassed at the beginning of this journey through this town of shadows was fading. He couldn't have that, even if this was one of the longest conversations he had held in the last fourteen years.

A deep breath.

A remembrance that the people around him were nothing to be afraid of.

"I-I am truly," He muttered at last, eyes downcast in fear, "Truly sorry if I have offended you in some way, b-but I am afraid I don't know what you're talking about…"

"No idea?! No idea?!?" She bawled her small girl fists and took a step forward, which was far more threatening than it should have been, her baby face screwed up with anger and confusion, "Don' give me tat! Don' ya dare give me tat! Ya expect may ta believe prison med ya go soft on us all?! It'll take alo' more ta get ta rotten outa ya, Earl!"

A second passed and yet Mana recognized the name in one eighth of that time.

A change. A simple change brought upon by a single word he had grown familiar with.

Earl, he thought, was that not the name Nea used so many times? Could these words have been intended for him, instead?

His dim brown eyes grew wide and golden in the moment of shock. He grew still and yet significantly more animated.

In a moment, he shot straight up to full height, finding himself towering over the girl.

She staggered backwards momentarily.

"Listen," He stated, "Um- Robin, was it?"

The surprise on the face of the girl called Robin was evident, but it only proved him correct, so he did not see the need to let her reply.

"I am, by birth anyways," He contiNued to say with one arm behind his back and a polite bow of his body like he had been trained to do when greeting a lady of any sort, and lingered in that position for a minute before sitting up straight again, "Mana Campbell. Up until yesterday night, I lived in another dimension in a wretched land known as France and I have never seen you before in all my life."

A heavy silence ensued as her face began to screw up in confusion.

He frowned. He would have to do more than that to convince her. He had heard from many that he and Nea were identical in appearance. He never personally saw the resemblance but he was sure she might, if she ever made his acquaintance.

He could tell by her expression that she hadn't believed him for a second so Mana didn't need the added effect of a kick in the shins to believe her.

The pain wasn't felt but she was quite strong so the force of her leg colliding with his caused his knees to buckle.

"Don' mess wit may!"

"It's true, honest!" Was his half baked reply.

And yet she still didn't believe him.

He was quick to assume that this little girl was someone his brother was acquainted with and had obviously made angry in some very grave manner. He wasn't sure why a twenty one year old was making friends with a ten year old or what he could have possible done to make her this angry, but those first few facts he could be relatively sure of.

Mana was just about to do his best to apologize on his brother's behalf in hopes that she might stop yelling at him when the small child suddenly exploded with words yet again.

"I don' care ya rotten dastard!" Robin cried in rage, "Now call af yer dogs bef're I kick ya again!"

"What... ?" He replied, not really wanting to get kicked again by this oddly vicious girl, "What dogs? What are you-?"

Her little hand shot straight up, pointing to the right as she looked him straight in the eyes with that very intense gaze of hers.

It was only then that Mana realized something. Though it was faint, under the folds of her red robe, he could she that Robin was shaking. Perhaps she was just a little girl, after all.

He didn't respond at first, still mildly afraid that she would kick him again. It never truly hurt him but the anticipation of the impact was enough to drive him out of his mind.

Finally giving into whatever sight she presented to him at his right, he dared to turn his head.

Unbeknownst to him, her words mildly frightened him, thinking that upon turning his head, he would see something that wasn't there before, something terrifying that even the eye could not fully comprehend.

Mana stood yet again to his feet.

The moment was actually quite disappointing. Nothing lay in that narrow alleyway but the same path laiden with shadows he had walked upon a few minutes previous.

"What is it you wish to show me Robin?"

"Look. Look harder." She said to him in a harsh whisper riding upon her rapid breaths, "Tey are tere… Tey are watchin'…."

He did as she said and yet he still saw nothing only hideous smooth concrete walls building a hideous maze through a hideous city without life or love.

He really did try to look at whatever creatures she saw in these alleys and yet he still came up with nothing. He may not have been the brightest of people but he could at least trust his eyes.

He felt a small hand reach up and grip the silk fabric of his robe. This girl was genuinely scared of these things she called 'His dogs'. There was no way she was lying.

"Can't… Ya hear tem…….?"

"I hear nothing..."

"Drool…. Drippin'….. Growlin'….. Tongues…..Lickin'…. Teet grindin'..."

He tried, he really did. He would have hallucinated if it helped him to understand the girl.

Somehow, it was odd. His eyes told him one thing but this girl told him another and she was native here, so surely Mana was in the wrong, as he always was, being retarded and all.

"Can't ya…. Smell…. Tem?"

Surely what she was saying was true, surely there were disgusting and vicious beasts hiding in the shadows. An all too familiar chill ran down his spine, the ringing of nonexistent bells in his ears. It was the familiar feeling, the fear and knowledge that all the stories were true and the monsters were coming to get you.

Goosebumps covered his bare limbs.

It was, more precisely, the knowledge that no one was coming to save you.

For a second, and just a mere second, his mind painted the faintest of pictures just beyond those concrete walls of hideous bulbous creatures with the bodies of beasts, crouched down on their arms and legs, revolting green mucus like drool falling from their sharp animalistic teeth, but with faces of men, giving them mouths to sing choruses; "You're so retard!" They sang, "You're so retarded!" They laughed as they circled him like a pack of wolves, ready to strike at any moment.

For a second, he saw these things, but then that moment ended because Robin, the little girl huddled up against his side, proceeded to speak again.

"Tey are 'ter…" She whispered with her nose pressed up against his side, "Tey 'ave come to take me' kidneys…. I just know it…"

And with those words, those hideous creations of his mind vanished and the illusion was shattered.

The fear dissipated as quickly as it came and he quickly found himself feeling safe here.

He now found himself completely and utterly one hundred percent certain that this girl had come in contact with his brother who was becoming increasingly more recognizable as that very person from his memories.

Mana found it laughable that it had been about fifteen years since and he still fell for the same trick twice. A grin found its way onto his lips as he remembered exactly what happened. It felt like only yesterday when he was six with mother trying to coax him out of his hiding place in the attic. He truly believed with all his heart what Nea told him, that at night the neighbors dogs would snarl out of their cages at night and steal the kidneys of young boys when they stole cookies past bedtime.

He was so scared, no different from now.

He had been caught by circumstance doing the exact same thing he was doing when he was five, but as it would happen, Nea was the same. He was telling the same jokes and playing the same pranks and what would have been a sign of concern for others was nothing but comfort for him.

It had been many years, but perhaps he wasn't so different. Perhaps he could see him again, and not stare into the lifeless eyes of what he had become.

And with that smile on his face, he proceeded to feel something real.

Mana stepped forward.

The momentary look on the girl's face was almost enduring but he kept walking.

There was nothing in the dark corners. He knew that, and yet he continued to wear a wary expression for the sake of the act.

He came to a sudden halt and, without further ado, lifted up his open hand and proceeded to recite the spell his mother taught him to rid the area of imaginary monsters.

"Monsters," He declared in a loud voice, still quite out of breath and exhausted from the energy expended the last couple of days, "Stay back and leave this place... ! You do not belong here... ! Stay and haunt this harmless girl and you will face the consequences…. …. !".

His words echoed back at him, but this time, the only pain he experienced was from embarrassment at how silly those words were.

But there wasn't a moment to lose. Apparently, according to his mother, the spell wouldn't last long.

As swiftly as he could, he spun around and dashed too Robin, immediately taking her hand and pulling her in the direction away from the dead end and out of the alley, running as fast as he could, which wasn't actually all that fast but he did his best.

"Quick!" He shouted, the only thing he could do to keep from laughing, "That spell won't last long... !"

"Wat?! Did it even work?!"

"I can't quite say, Robin! I'm not the Earl…. , after all... !"

"Yes ya ar! Why else do ya 'ave 'is face fer?!"

"Not quite sure, mademoiselle... ! Coming from the same embryo might of had something to do with it, though…. !"

"Wat?!".

And so they ran, far far away, to a warm place safe from the night


	5. Chapter V Part I

Chapter IV

This man who Robin was ninety percent sure was her old master putting on a stupid and far too obvious disguise for his own enjoyment was childish, air headed, stupid, kept calling her some alien nickname, 'Mademoiselle', and treated her like a kid.

He, the old master look alike who called himself Mana Campbell, was all she disliked about adults. She did not like him, not in the slightest bit. She did not dislike him as much as her old master but she still disliked him. Robin convinced herself she only followed him last night for personal safety.

That being said, she had no idea why she invited him into the orphanage to have warm porridge and sit by the fire if that was in fact the case.

Robin, though only eleven, liked to think herself a sensible girl when it came to strangers, particularly ones barring that particularly smug and yet quite beautiful face, but for some reason, under the veil of nightfall, she just lost it all in the light of the moon.

She remembered the light of the moon and the glimmering stars dancing all about it the way pretty and dangerous woman used to dance all around her old master at parties all too vividly.

At first it was under the careful lense of fear, being knowledgeable of the vicious dogs her old master had put out on the streets to terrorize and kill the citizens after nightfall.

Robin had forced to stay out much later than normal as punishment because when she and the other girls were told to sweep the center area after the most recent dust storm, she got tired, a reasonable response as it was about six in the morning, according to the clock tower, anyways, and she began to slack. She just leaned on her broom stick for two hours, all the while, watching the other girls work frantically all around her.

The girl would have gotten away with it, to if that brat goody two shoes, Melinda hadn't told on her to the governess.

As punishment, she lost that night's supper and she had to stay out late at night to sweep the outer rims of the region center, which was where the well and old shops were.

Of course she didn't go quietly. Why would she. After all, in one of his many acts of evil against the city of Wonderland, the Great Earl, the man she used to work for, actually, put vicious man eating dogs who required neither sleep nor food but merely ate small children's organs for fun, in the streets.

A child on the empty streets, unguarded as the sun went below the horizon, she thought she would be eaten for sure. Robin had been horrified for years of the beasts after all the rumors and stories her master told her and when that very same master kicked her out of his moving house and abandoned her at some orphanage in the grey slums, that fear only grew.

She swept the outer layers as fast as she possibly could, making sure not even to miss a single corner, all the while being silent as the grave she thought she might just prematurely find this wretched night.

The job was finished and, with a racing heart, she thought she might of escaped the dogs.

It was only when she was halfway to the orphanage doors that she heard a sound.

It was quiet but still just enough to set her nerves on edge.

Had the dogs found her? Had they, at last, gotten hold of her scent? Was this going to be the end of her?

All these thoughts were beat into her head by the pounding of her racing heartbeat.

For a mere second, she dared to be brave and look beyond the corner from where she stood to see the bloodthirsty beasts that haunted her this way.

She was prepared for anything; A ghastly monster, a bulbous demonic creature, a thing she would only find in the worst of her nightmares.

Robin had seen so many things in her time spent in the Earl's household, some ugly, some horrifying, that she thought her skin had grown far too thick to be affected by such sights and yet her she was peeking beyond the corner and that is when she first saw him.

She didn't believe in angels. It was a fact in her young mind that such creatures that were sent to watch over every person on the continent could not, would not and did not exist. She knew this and yet for a few seconds from behind that corner, she doubted because the sight that filled her eyes was beautiful.

Beautiful was an understatement. Yes, he bore the face of the master she heard recently escaped his confinements, but she knew immediately that this creature standing still as stone upon the abandoned streets was not him. No, it was anything but, that she knew without a doubt.

Long strands of silky black hair fell down to the creatures lower back gently waving in the wind, clean and pure like the winding impurities of a cave crystal, the ends waving and curling in the most perfect and poetic way she might have thought they were submerged under water. One strand of bangs fell down his distinguished cheekbone and tickled his chin. The other was tucked Neatly behind his ear, looking so soft and delicate she was tempted to reach out and touch it.

His skin was pure, shimmering in the delicate weaves of the moonlight like fresh snow. There were no blemishes, no freckles, no moles, nothing. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. It was perfect and soft skin and all she could do was remain enraptured by it.

A silk robe clung to his thin and elegant body. His arms were like bones and his cheeks were sunken in. His frame was pale and colorless, made only of brush strokes and white and black with the sole exception of his eyes.

So different from her old master's, his eyes were a shimmering shade of gold, so lively and brilliant she might have thought the color had come alive in his gaze so fixed upon the moon and the stars that danced around it.

To this day, Robin is still not entirely sure what came over her when she found herself walking towards this seemingly ethereal man.

Involuntarily, she walked and did not pay attention so her dried up and callused heal scraped against the path.

Her heart stopped in her chest. His head jerked over to see her and she bolted.

Robin wasn't even sure why she bolted. It was like an instinct, leading her away, telling her that that angel was her master escaped from prison come to kill her for all the secrets she knew about him and his house.

She was scared, she knew that much. Burning emotions built up in her lungs and somehow it felt silky, stupid, childish and anticlimactic when she tripped and the man caught up with her only for her to find that he was most likely her old master wearing some silly disguise, but on the faint possibility he wasn't, he was the embodiment of all she didn't like in the world.

That being said, she still invited him in to have warm housing and heated porridge.

Honestly, sometimes she wondered who was truly the childish one.

Hours past.

Minutes passed.

Seconds passed.

Moments passed her by like the wind and yet sleep never came to her tired and weary eyes.

Soon, that special hour in the early and ungodly morning hours came when seemingly dreams merged with the known reality and all became possible.

The clock tower signalled three in the morning, which was the time many hunters and merchants left the city grounds and headed to the forests to hunt for food. It was also the traditional time when housewives would awaken from their nightly slumber and take down the clothing they hung on their clotheslines for the children who would go to school and the husband who was probably going to go hunting in the forests outside of Wonderland.

The black sky of night bore hints of sky blue and pale violets as a fresh morning began to make its way to the horizon, turquoise crystal skies spilling over concrete roofs as the morning came upon the city of Wonderland equally like a crouching lion.

The air was sweet, as morning air usually is, seeming to taste of a melody of its own, the singing birds just an accompanying chorus to the main vocalist that was the addictive smell of the morning dew.

Robin did not feel good and yet she could not say she felt particularly bad, either.

Her back ached and her limbs felt sore from exhaustion yet her heart raced from exhilaration.

Truthfully, Robin felt everything.

She just sat with her back propped up against her squeaky mattress, a filthy comforter half eaten by moths loosely draped around her half frozen shoulders. Her legs were spread as she replaced upon her bedroom floor.

She was relaxed and yet she could not sleep. It just wouldn't come to her.

It was because the man she had invited into this orphanage with his face in the crook of his arm, sleeping silently upon her desk was just as captivatingly beautiful sleeping as he was awake.

All she could see was what her dim candle illuminated but bit was enough.

The moment she told him to go into this small room so that she wouldn't immediately get chewed out by the governess in the middle of the night, he walked straight to the chair, lied down, and fell asleep.

No words were exchanged and it was actually quite awkward.

All she could do was stare. She was helpless to the mysterious connection she had unknowingly formed with this man and the angelic air he had about him. He bore the face of her old master. He called himself Mana and claimed to be the Earl's twin brother or something. She didn't, couldn't , should not believe it and yet that was not what seemed to draw her to him.

What exactly drew her to him, she wondered?

Who was to say, really. She never really properly understood her own heart and the emotions it held.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and hid her face in them only enough to warm her cheeks but not enough to hide the man's beautiful sleeping form.

Perhaps she'd learn of whatever it was when she got some sleep. Perhaps that's all it was.

Robin began to drift. Her body began to feel weightless, a mere price of wood drifting upon innumerable waves on the ocean. Her eyelids become heavy as she gave into the subtle pull of slumbers magnetic field.

She was just about to reach the point of sleep, but she had never been much of a deep sleeper. Even the sound of a mouse's heartbeat was enough to awaken her, much more the whining of her door opening and the obnoxious giggling of a bunch of girls.

At first her mind did not register what she heard, but when she did, her eyes flew open and her muscles were immediately ready for some kind of brawl, not that she even ever got that far before the governess broke her and her opponent up and ruined the rather one-sided duel. Not to brag, but she was quite good in a street fight.

She didn't need to see who was there. Robin had only been here two months and she had already grown far too used to this'd habitual aggravation.

"Git out, Melinda!" She growled just harshly enough to get the message across as she shot straight up, just quick enough to catch as glimpse of those green eyes filled with sudden fear and that little round nose sticking its way into places it didn't belong.

Of course, the girl didn't bother moving, as she never did anything anyone with the soul exception of the governess told her to do.

Robin cringed when she heard Mana stir in his sleep, his arms making sound as the rubber against the wooden table. Perhaps he was less of a deep sleeper than she thought.

Melinda's eyes turned into crescent moons through the creak of the door as a wild grin broke out on her face.

"I'm gonna tell the governess!"

Stepping towards Melinda in warning, ankles seemingly thirty pounds each, she let a harsh growl force its way out of her throat.

"Na ya won'!" She declared as rage boiled up inside her, knowing that the girl was more than capable of doing just that, "No' if I can help i'!"

"She's gonna be furious!" Melinda laughed, "You'll be kicked out of the orphanage for sure this time!"

Robin was really just about to charge at her and tackle her to the ground with all her might. She was going to start a fight because she truly thought it was her only option.

She knew she had done wrong which was why inviting this strange yet familiar man into the orphanage for safety from the dogs was such a deeply regretted choice. The governess had long since told her that she was on her last chance and if she pulled another stunt, she would be thrown on the street quicker than she could say sorry, but frankly she was tired and didn't have enough mental tolerance to put up with Melinda's obnoxious personality.

That was, of course, until, yet again, the man called Mana spoke.

"What are we now telling the governess, Mademoiselle?"

Turning, she saw him sitting up with an unusually straight posture, rubbing the sleep from his still inhumanly golden eyes but still very awake and looking not at Robin but at the younger girl in the crack of the door who instantaneously bore an expression of fear and awe at meeting the golden gaze that now requested her attention.

"I hope it's nothing bad." He muttered lazily, as he let his arms dropped to his sides, "I don't particularly want to be scolded by anyone."

A silence followed. It wasn't uncomfortable, just merely filled with every member's burning desire to say something, which sounded like something akin to the gentle buzzing one could make with one's vocal cords. Both girls kept their mouths in tight stressed positions like that of an old woman like they weren't sure exactly what to say while Mana just held the tip of his tongue tight between his teeth like he were trying to keep himself from saying anything to these complete strangers.

But that silence ended suddenly and Robin felt immediate repulsion and aggravation when the first words to leave Melinda's mouth upon meeting this stranger were these:

"Goodness, you're accent is beautiful…" She blurted suddenly.

What made Robin thrice as disgusted, however was how not surprised or even uncomfortable Mana seemed at the sudden and rather rude compliment.

"Why, thank you." He replied with an all too soft smile, eyes still sleepy and hands Neatly folded in his lap, "Aren't you a sweet one."

Robin scoffed, thinking his accent sounded silly and needlessly complicated but she was silenced when his eyes suddenly met hers.

"Robin?"

"Y-Y-Yeh...?"

He began to smile from ear to ear when her began to beck her forward.

"What are you waiting for?" He asked, "Why don't you invite your guest in?"

Her face screwed up, "Wat?!"

"I don't have to repeat myself."

"An' tis is may room! I don' 'ave ta do nothin'!" She declared, fuming, with a stomp of her foot which somehow Managed to shake the orphanage down to its foundation. Concerningly enough, this building was made up of unstable slabs of concrete and Robin often had temper tantrums.

Dust fell from the white ceiling like snow as a slight growl ran through the buildings body but Mana hardly seemed affected or even mildly frightened. He just kept that cheerful and childish expression he bore since the moment she lay eyes on him.

"Yes," He replied, "But it's the polite thing to do, mademoiselle."

Before she had even a second to protest against this blatant disrespect of her privacy and property, she felt a rush against her shoulder and she was horrified to see Melinda walking past her, into the expansion of her room, and straight to Mana like some sentimental lover, taking hold of his arm like she had known him for any longer than a mere thirty seconds.

Honestly, she thought, you might think a girl like her would be able to recognize the face of thee mask that killed her family and have the decency not to fall for him the moment she saw him.

Her mother and father were, most likely, rolling in their graves right now.

The only satisfaction Robin got from that moment was how disturbed Mana looked by the physical contact, but she had quickly made up her mind that she hated this man, wanting him to leave this orphanage and her life the moment Melinda made the decision to let go of him, or perhaps just leave with Melinda still clinging to him so that she would no longer have to see either one of them ever again.

It was official now. She had only invited him in to share in her portion of porridge and warmth out of the kindness of her heart, simply not wanting even someone like him to get devoured by the Earl's dogs.

Nothing more, nothing less.

"Oh, mystery sir," Melinda giggled, hardly noticing how Mana just stared at her unblinking, clEarly uncomfortable, "Our dear Robin has never had people as beautiful as you over before~"

"I-Is that so…." He muttered in reply, "But judging by your previous conversation, she is not supposed to have anyone over, is she?"

"True true," She said as she batted her unusually long eyelashes in his direction, but not paying his statement any mind, "So where are you from, ever mysterious stranger?"

A silence. His eyes were so wide and unblinking, for a second, Robin thought they might have been sewn open. Finally, he dare speak yet again, but a sly smirk was noticeable upon his lips the same way an ace is visible up a cheaters sleeve.

"Now now," He replied just as sweetly, gently and oh so very subtly removing the girl's hand from his arm, "Here's an offer. I tell you where my origins lie and you tell me yours. Does that sound good, Melinda?"

And, of course, like the naive child she was, Melinda immediately agreed.

"I hail from a rather miserable land known simply as France. And you, Melinda?"

"Well, that's easy! I'm from here! I've lived here since my parents died!"

"...I see…. And…. Where is here?"

"The concrete slums, of course! Where else?"

"I see, and where are the concrete slums….? You know, on the map of….?"

"Wonderlands map? Oh, thats an easy one! It's in the northeast region, the poorest sect of them all!"

A look of something akin to relief passed over his features.

"The north east of Wonderland…" He said softly, almost as though he thought the words sounded good on his tongue, "Hmmm…. So that is where I am…."

"Sir…?" Melinda appeared confused but once again found herself dazzled by the strange man's accent when he turned to her and spoke yet again.

"Melinda, I should thank you." He replied as he cast a glance to the opened door, "You've been so very helpful, but I don't think I could live with myself if I kept you from your breakfast a moment longer…"

A flip was switched in her system as her cheeks flushed in embarrassment, her face screwing up in the same way Robin's often did.

"Oh no!" She cried as she spun on her heel and sprinted out the door, "My porridge!"

And with steadily fading footsteps and an increasingly shaken staircase, the little girl vanished from sight and mind, amazing both remaining occupants of the room at the shere athletic speed she was capable of when her food was involved.

Robin found herself overcome with the sensation that the lack of Melinda's presence was a six hundred pound weight lifted from her shoulders, but at the same time holding the weight at all left her so very physically exhausted that she didn't want to stay awake a second longer and yet she was just far too exhausted to find that very sleep she so longed for.

She let out a heavy sigh as, with one quick shove, she slammed her door close in hopes for a moment's privacy.

And more ceiling dust rained down at the action, falling atop Mana's head and dying the black strands a shade of ashen grey momentarily but he did not seem to mind at all.

"Well," He said to no one in particular, "That went smoothly...:"

"Wat do ya mean I' wen' over smoothly?! Wai ya seducin' li'le gals fer information, fo?!"

"Well," He replied, his tone sharp, "I know absolutely nothing of this place, and I knew you wouldn't tell me, so I had to improvise, of course."

"Of carse I won' tell ya nothin', ya rotten Earl!"

"See, its that attitude right there that gets in the way of your judgment. You see, dear Robin, if I was this Great Earl, that you regard as a very powerful person, that I would have killed you long ago, and I would have had no reason to put up a facade of ignorance."

But soon, Robin's posture grew straight and her feet firmly planted, knowing that the Earl was a trickster and he would do anything to have his way. Her spirit grew strong as she looked him straight in the eye.

"If ya er' not ta Earl," She said, "Ten I 'ave no reason ta do wat ya say."

"That fact was never in question." He replied with a slight raise of his eyebrow, "But honestly, I have to wonder about you. You talk of Nea-"

"Nue?"

"That's my brothers true name, darling. Anyways, you talk of Nea as if you hate him, but in the next moment you act as though he has some kind of authority over you. Mind my curiosity, but just what kind of relationship did you have with him?"

"Well…. Well 'e is a mad rotten 'alf brained monster 'o abandoned may in this awfo place fa no reason! No reason a' all!"

"Abandoned you, you say? Yes he has the… Tendency to do that…"

"Wat's tat supposed ta mean, ya mad git?"

"Well, to say the least, I am familiar with his need to up and abandon people. The last time I saw him was fourteen years ago. He was much smaller back then."

"Tis isn' about ya!"

"I know, I know."

"... But…. 'ow small… exactly?"

"Pardon?"

"Wo' like a li'l lad, er somethin'?"

"What's with that look? Are you looking for embarrassing tales from his childhood?"

"Yes please."

"See, Robin. That's what I'm saying. For embarrassing tales to have value, you must be very familiar with the subject of these embarrassing tales. Yes, you appear to dislike him, but I don't think anything more of that than a friendly rivalry. I think it's more or less my business to know what it was my brother did to earn such as villainous place in your eyes."

She could see the surprise in his eyes when she instinctively shuttered and grew pale at his words.

Robin shifted her weight from foot to foot awkwardly.

Surprise soon turned to concern the way mold finds its way onto the bread, and she did her best to hide it but she couldn't. The resurfacing of that certain subject was taboo these days, some living in denial it ever happened to begin with.

It was the single event that turned the Earl from villain to monster in both her eyes and the eyes of the world. It was the mentioning of what is now referred to as "The Grey Massacre".

"Oh dear…" The man's eyes began to wonder as he began to take back what he had said, "Perhaps I shouldn't have said that… I-"

"Since the beginning," She cut in suddenly and softly, her eyes distant, staring off into the ceiling like she were looking into the recorded memories of a distant past, speaking words with a tongue that wasn't hers like she were taught to parrot this speech, "The great Earl has been a villain, a terrorist, a murderer. He would steal and take what wasn't his. He would destroy buildings and burn forests. He would kill commoners and low lifes in the street for seemingly no reason at all…"

"... But what changed?"

"The Great Earl was captured by the Royal Guard and brought low when he committed the most heinous of crimes."

Mana's eyes remained wide but they were blank, with neither care nor emotion visibly concealed in those golden irises. What passed over his face was an expression of darkness, but Robin was far too distracted to catch a glimpse.

"And…" He asked, his voice low and monotonous, almost seemingly not coming from him, "What was that crime…. Robin?"

"He…" She began, and yet she seemed to be unable to speak the works, "He-He… He killed-!"

"The great Earl slayed the entire royal family within the castle walls, completely unprompted, unexpectedly and completely without motive or reason."

The daze was neutralized the same way milk neutralizes acid by the alien voice that suddenly caught both their ears. The two occupants of the room, jerked their heads around so fast they could have potentially injured themselves just to see who the new face was that peeked its way through the door.

Mana's curiosity peaked while Robin just paled as her stomach hit the floor.

Robin knew full well who that voice was and it spelled only ill fortune for her.

The two of them glanced through the crack in the door to see what appeared to be a very tall woman standing in the doorway.

Her skin pale, her hair golden, her blue eyes hardly visible through the dark lenses glasses that framed them. The voice heard was deep and mature, but the woman in the doorway looked petite and feminine, looking, perhaps in her thirties.

It never failed to remind Robin to never judge by appearances.

"Open the door, Robin."

"G-G-Governess….!" She stuttered fearfully, fully prepared to fake puppy eyes if it came down to it, "G-Governess Lulu bell, I-!"

"Do I need to repeat myself?"

"N-No, Madame!"

And without a second thought, Robin leaped from her place, put both hands on the doorknob, yanked so hard she thought she might rip the door from its frame, and took a total of fifteen steps away from the woman, head held low in shame.

Mana was visibly shocked at the sight he beheld of the woman who walked in, as she was intact wearing trousers instead of a skirt, but he tried not to let it show because, just as easily as Robin could break him in half, this woman in front of him could break every bone in his body by merely looking unhappily at him for too long.

Aside from the few visible scars she clearly tried to cover up with makeup, she was quite well built and had obviously trained in combat at some point in her life.

It wouldn't have hurt him, but the lack of mobility for the rest of his life would have been a disadvantage, particularly if he truly desired to find his brother again.

He was quite quick to realize that this woman called Lulu Bell was studying him, as well and judging by the look of disgust she cast his way, a slight crackle in the brow and a down turn of the lips, she did not like what she saw.

He deemed it suspicious enough to address. Before he could address that look, she began to speak yet again.

"The Great Earl has killed many commoners," She spoke clEarly like an authorities figure, "Such as the parents of most of the girls that reside here but the life of a Royal that has reigned supreme in this grand city for more than five hundred years is infinitely more precious and he destroyed all fifteen of the reigning monarchs in a single night."

"Oh…." Was all Mana could Manage to say in his confusion, feeling like a small child being scolded, like he was being blamed for thee story she told him, "That is… not good…."

"It was more than not good," She corrected, "It was the most abominable crime ever recorded in the history of Wonderland and it will be remembered as such."

"P-Perhaps something was misunderstood." He began, an odd glimmer of hope in his golden eyes, a slight smile on his lips, "I know it to be impossible, actually. "

"How, exactly?"

"No facts, really. Just belief. You see, I don't believe a person like him would be able to commit such a crime unless he had his reasons."

"You speak as though you know the Great Earl.'

"I don't know the great Earl in any way, Ms. Bell. I can promise you that."

It was at this point that Robin, already shocked with fear of her all too frightening governess, was now overcome with a need to quit her own life because the two participants of the conversation had, for reasons she was not sure of, had leaned in close, just a few inches away from each others faces.

She was actually, momentarily, fearful that they were going to kiss and she would have further reason to complain because she had genuinely no idea why everyone found the Earl and his lookalike so attractive.

But, thank goodness, they didn't and Robin breathed a heavy sigh of relief when Lulu Bell retracted a few steps.

Unfortunately, that drew attention to herself and she suddenly found herself under the penetrating gaze of her mildly irritated governess.

Mild irritation was far from good. She had seen a man permanently maimed because of that mild irritation.

"Misunderstanding or not," She stated, "Even lesser crimes and minor disobedience of children must be punished."

Robin lowered her head. She could literally taste the blood from the beating to come already.

"Robin."

Honestly, she thought, this Mana person has caused me far too much trouble already.

"Did I not tell you many times that you are not to have visitors over?"

Silence.

"Did I or did I not tell you this, Robin?"

"Y-Ya did, Governess…."

"Very well. If that is the case, then what is this man doing here? Do you mean to tell me that you openly and blatantly disobeyed me?"

Further silence because the young girl could genuinely not find it in her to speak.

So many days had passed like this, but never with the promise of being thrown out on the streets where the dogs roamed.

With every word, the governess grew louder and Robin shrunk a little bit more.

She was in trouble.

She had no alibis. She had really done it this time.

But then, as usual, everything changed when he spoke yet again.

"But I am no visitor, Ms. Bell! No, indeed!"

The two females lifted their heads and turned to Mana to see that he now stood in place, arms pulled behind his back, and a wide smile upon his face.

Robin was instantly suspicious. He was up to something and it wasn't good.

"You aren't one of Robin's visitors…." Lulu Bell frowned, "Then why are you here, might I ask?"

"Simple," He said with a slight skip of his ankles, looking more and more life a child with every passing second, "I am not a visitor, but a customer."

"A…. Customer….?" Robin muttered, unsure of what to make of this, but truly not wanting it to be the terrifying potential possibility, "Wat ta bloody hell does tat mean, ya git?!".

"It means I wish to adopt one of your girls!" He joyfully declared with a jab of his finger in Robin's direction, perfectly timed with Robin's little jaw hitting the floor with a loud thump, "That one, more specifically!"

"Wat?!" Robin screamed, stomping forward like she were considering fighting him over this, "Why?!"

"Well, because over the past hours, I've truly grown fond of you!" His tone patronizing and as fake as he could possibly make it, "And this truly has nothing to do with some information you may or may not have for me!"

As expected, she thought, this dastard is just as rotten as his brother, only wanting her for her information on the Earl and nothing more.

Despite the fact that she knew that if the governess found out about her connections to the Earl, she would be imprisoned for life, she still felt the need to protest against this decision violently till it became nothing short of suspicious.

"Ya can' be my fater!" She cried out yet again, flailing her arms around like a child, tears beginning to fill her Nearly always dry eyes, "Ya can' just do tat, ya rotten dastard!".

"Ah, but I can, dear Robin," He grinned so very pleasantly, it was almost sickening, "And I will. Honestly, you view of life is so closed. I might have to fix that when you become my daughter~!".

" Wat?!?"

It was insane. No, it was more than insane.

Her mind could hardly even begin to comprehend how not right this was.

This was, in her mind, the worst possible outcome.

I mean, yes she always wanted as parent, even if it wasn't biological and she always wanted to be taken care of someone who actually cared for her. She also just happened to absolutely despise it here but this was absolutely not how she wanted those wishes fulfilled.

"Finally." Lulu Bell muttered, much to Robin's absolute horror, "Come with me."

Lule Bell began to walk out the door with Mana in tow, a very obvious skip in his normally quite miserables step.

As panic welled up inside her, both hands flew to the sides of her head like she were trying to keep it from exploding, and as she lost control of her life yet again, she found that all she could do was scream at the top of her lungs.

Moments passed that way as her governess and the men now claiming to be her father went out the door.

It seemed like the end of the world to her, as children usually think.

But then that moment passed and she was surprised, her heart skipped a beat, physically shocked when another voice out voiced her.

A single voice, a single monetary word that told thousands of stories.

That single sound was what the true end of a world sounded like.

Robin suddenly found her scream cut short at the sudden and unexpected sound of a gunshot ringing in her ears.


	6. Chapter VI Part I

Chapter IV

The second the gun went off, I was there in the building in the span of the massive earache of a sound. The great Earl was not one to be late.

The moment the sonic boom echoed through the vast main hall and tore through the narrow halls, I was present.

The instant it left the barrel, the delicate silver barrel, still hot, sat comfortably in between my index and middle finger.

In the span of a heartbeat I was there and just like that, it had begun.

The kick of such a powerful handheld gun knocked Lulubell back for a moment, staggering her for that same amount of time it took me to get there, and it was enough. The one called the Duchess, one of the middle classes of the Royal Guard, hardly had time to see me coming and I was not about to waste my seconds when it came to her.

I knew exactly how dirty my old plaything could be and she was not to be underestimated.

It was pathetic and weak but that's why I knew I had to retake him from wherever he had wandered off too.

Even safe havens like this so called orphanage had become corrupted with the wolves. There truly was a new kind of fire in Wonderland, one I was not familiar with, and I was never one to welcome unwanted visitors.

But of course the creature, the homunculus, the person I still had yet to accept as my brother from so long ago was far too shocked and stunned in the mere moments that passed to move. The pathetic creature probably hadn't even known Lulubell had aimed her gun at him, much less that she had fired.

The thought probably hadn't even reached his weak little mind before I arrived, taking hold of his head, pressing it against my shoulder and with the other hand, swiftly catching the bullet, stopping it in its straight path to Mana's head.

It was not hard. Fortunately, he didn't struggle.

Staggered, her back against the wall, Lulubell's snake like pupils dilated till Nearly her entire iris was as black as her heart and that is when I brought my leg up, swinging it around just in time for my knee to make an impact on her now risen gun, blocking the second shot that I knew was to come.

Only this time, when the gun went off, there was only a heavy silence.

Silent because the action was frivolous and heavy because most could not do something like this and survive this woman's wrath.

My time was limited so I immediately twisted my body around and slammed my free foot against the banister from where I stood, kicking off to lift myself and maneuvering my body as nimble as a cat, determined to get away as quickly as possible.

Down the steep wooden staircase I flipped, Taking Mana with me, his bony and compliant torso firmly within my grasp.

Thank goodness. If he decided to be disobedient in those moments, I probably would have left him to that Lulubell for her to do as she pleased, something I did not normally have the stomach for.

With the mid air flip completed, I steadied my legs, the right in front of the left and my back hunched forward, a practiced technique I perfected over the years. Soon my black boots met the ivory white and nightly black checkered tiles at the bottom of the winding staircase, setting me upon the ground gracefully like I were a feather.

The moment my feet met the ground, the hair on the back of my neck stood up in alarm and my arms let go of Mana on reflex, who hit the ground with a satisfying thud.

My right hand went straight for the pistol, pulling it from the holster at my hip and loading it with the bullet in my left.

Glancing upwards to my new opponent and old playmate, I soon found the eye contact interrupted.

In a moment captured in slow motion, I found my attention stolen by one of Lulebell's ever rude, ever ugly, ever abominable creatures.

A Chimera was caught in between us, a disgusting winged ape like creature flying straight towards me, its knife like claws and many layers of sharp white teeth bared to kill.

I ignored the need to vomit at the scent of its breath and the rage at the knowledge that its saliva would make contact with my face if I let this go on a moment longer.

In this life, we only have a second to do most things so I had to make it count, especially when my face was involved.

My arm shot up quicker than human limits would probably allow, far and, after whispering a choice set of programs for the pistol to engrave upon the bullet, I pulled the trigger.

"Flame." The ghost of the word only had a second to touch my lips before my own gun fired and the Chimera's head jerked backwards, a bullet planting into its forehead and making its way out the other end, leaving a thick trail of black blood in its path.

The incantation activated halfway through and the body of the creature became alighted with a powerfulness crimson flame, consuming and killing it instantly before it could lay a finger on me, reducing it to ash immediately.

I smiled grimly at the look of rage in Lulubell's cat like eyes as her arm flew in front of her to block the now incoming bullet, temporarily blinding her.

I took advantage of that.

Suddenly, the moment came back to real time as the remains of that Chimera's body cashed down upon me and Mana, creating a dust cloud perfect for us to make our escape.

"Come on!" I hissed as I took firm hold of Mana's wrist and pulled him in another direction where I knew the door out of this hellhole was and ran like my very life depended on it because, despite being the Great Millennium Earl and all, it kind of did.

I pushed the twin doors open so hard, one might have thought they were trying to fly off their brass handles and took off as fast as I could put the opening, despite being temporarily blinded by the heavy sunlight.

I just ran.

I just ran like no one could stop me, a death grip on Mana's wrist as I pulled him in tow.

He was trying to be a burden, to slow me down, the pathetic creature, as the bits of the ash cloud he inhaled had him half coughing his lungs out, but he was so very thin and bony like her had bird bones for a skeleton that I forced him onward with little trouble.

But he almost suffered, in the brief rush of adrenaline, I was blinded just for a second by nostalgia.

I no longer saw the concrete street, but rather a time long ago from my time as Nea, the weak boy from the country, when my elder twin would cough and cough till he couldn't breath. It was always my fault, because I pushed him too hard in a game of tag of some sort and for a brief second, an old wave if guilt washed over me, but somehow, those old shallow waters only strengthened my fiery rage.

It was his fault, after all, not mine.

But the moment was cut short when, overhead I heard a sharp, shrill noise like the call of a wild bird, approaching quickly, shaking the ground wildly like a stampede.

I was familiar enough with Lulu Bell's chimera to know what that meant.

A horde.

Perhaps a bit too loudly, I cursed. I had yet to fully recover from my wounds so I could not face them head on. No, not even the great Millennium Earl could stop them.

In this terribly almost tragically unartistic and ugly town, I couldn't hope to tell my way around it and locate the Nearest portal point before the portal found me. Though I was not drowning, I was still neck deep in raging water, with hardly enough time to find the right stroke to swim to safety.

Oh well. This wasn't my first rodeo. I might just have to improvise.

I released Mana and he made an audible sound of distress.

With a newfound need to live, I turned sharply right, the soles of my feet grinding against the rough ground, into a narrow alleyway, in between two of those awful concrete buildings. Upon fleeing into the thin little area filled with dripping pipes, shadows, and week old rat corpses, I immediately forced my knees to hit the ground.

"Get down!" I screamed.

It was only after the sky was blotted out with the horde of vicious creatures that I knew my brother had headed my words.

Those revolting Chimera. Thousands upon thousands of them. Each one different from the other. Enough Chimera to bought out the sun.

Through the faint light that escaped the massive sea of bodies that rushed heavily like a river passed all that surrounded us, I saw his face, that accursed face identical to mine, but pale like a ghost, twitching at the ends of the mouth up and down like he didn't know whether to smile or cry.

He appeared no different from when I last saw him, except for some ashes on his face and a slight tustle of his hair. This was good news as it meant the Royal Guard had yet to harvest his organs for a chance at my DNA, but it hardly explained his lack of response.

The main hint, however, was in his eyes. They appeared slightly too bright, slightly too childish like he really had as little a grasp on the situation as I thought he did. Mana's mind was blank, shocked, undecided on how to react to recent events. That was actually quite logical, considering he had only been here for about seventy two hours and was hardly told anything about this ridiculously large jump from France.

My brother's reaction was perfectly logical and human. It actually wasn't anything short of my reaction the first couple of days in Wonderland, but knowing this, I still couldn't curve the violent anger that broke out inside of me.

I lost control then and there. I despised losing control but Mana often brought about these sorts of episodes. I blamed him for them, rather than myself.

Despite how logic and reasoning contradicted it, it enraged me, but it was the Earl who lunged at him, reaching out a cruel hand and struck him swiftly across his unsuspecting face.

This not only knocked him out of his stupor, but pushed his head back with such a force, it slammed against an adjacent rusted pipe that hardly looked sturdy enough to contain its own contents, much less sustain a blow from Mana's thick skull.

He groaned in pain as he retracted slightly, visibly shaken and distressed, but the Earl took it simply as a moment of weakness, lunging forward yet again and taking Mana by the collar of his robe with both hands.

"You absolute idiot!" He hissed venomously, the audible poison lacing his words almost having a flavor with the few inch space between their faces, "What are you doing here?! How the hell did you find this place?!"

Mana sneered sarcastically, "You dropped me here!".

"Not here! In Wonderland, you daft reject!"

"Reject?!" He snapped right back, "I'm sorry, who needs to be told everything twice?!"

"Listen, you!" The Earl growled, pulling on his collar all the tighter till it began to choke him, "That portral was not something people could go through as they pleased! It collapsed as soon as I reached the other side!"

"W-Well maybe it opened again!"

"That's not possible!"

"Oh!" Mana cried suddenly, "Why did you even come find me?! Just so that you could groan and-!?"

"Don't compare me to father! Don't ever compare me to that accursed man again, Mana!"

And there it was. The words he had been hiding, slipping from his lips as easy as breath itself. It was almost as though the fires from the rage he felt inside him burnt the seal of iron he placed upon his lips to keep those words in to ashes, leaving weak and childish truths to come and go as they pleased.

Weak and childish.

That's how I knew it was not the Earl who said that, but me, Nea. I was the one who showed weakness to someone as wretched as this Mana.

But unfortunately, it was too late to take it back.

I had seen the look of triumph on Mana's face.

He knew he won. I admitted it at last. I was Nea, that idiotic brother he once had.

As soon as I realized my mistake, I loosened my grip upon his collar and turned away from him. I didn't really want to look him in the eyes anymore. The way he looked at me like we were equals was utterly sickening.

But then he just had to contiNue on and speak.

"So you admit it, then?" There was a notable cheer in Mana's tone now and I did not need to see his face to know that he was smiling, "You admit that you are Nea?".

All this talking was grading on my nerves and patience. Blood pulsed in my brain and pain racked my body as I had not yet fully healed. But it was also then that the Earl claimed my tongue and took over my speech.

He was always better at talking than I ever was.

"Maybe once." The Great Millennium Earl's voice was a harsh whisper as he turned to look at Manas disheartened expression, "But I killed him. I can confirm that your brother is fully dead, Mana."

And then with the most wicked grin a human being could muster, The Earl proceeded to say something he was not supposed to.

"Nea is dead just like your precious mother." He chuckled softly, "Would you like to join them?"

And the visible look of rage and horror that passed over Mana's expression and the tightening of his wrists caused a look of utter sadistic bliss to yank upon the Earl's face.

He had won.

He had gotten the last laugh. He always did and always would. That was all that mattered to him.

In the end. That would always be all that mattered to him.

If it mattered to him, the Earl, than surely it was all that mattered to weak and childish old me, right?

But soon the blissful moment was cut short.

Suddenly, a deep voice echoed through the alleyways like it were projected through a speaker, like it were coming from inside my very mind.

"Oh, how sweet. A reunion of brothers after all these years."

Mana was visibly distressed, grinding his teeth and clamping his hands over his ears in fright.

I, on the other hand, had grown used to hearing that voice.

It could only being to one.

Lulubell.

But.

But Lulubell did not have that power. I only knew one have the Royal Guardsmen that had that ability, and if he was present, I knew we were in for more than a little hell.

The pace of the passing by chimera was slowing.

Light streams, heavy and bright were falling into the alleyways, but I knew it was not from the sun.

It was from their eyes.

Mana may not have noticed, but I did.

That could only mean one thing.

"Bandersnatch!" The name tore through my throat ask spun around, letting the name echo back to the original speaker, "Show yourself!"

"Hahaha…" The duchess' laugh echoed through my very body, seemingly shaking the particles in the air with her voice alone, "He already has, Earl."

And my eyes were instantly glued to the shimmer of metal in light, heightening my senses as its rapid movement tussled the air around me. My blood turned cold as I reflexively dodged, jerking backwards as quickly as I could.

The throwing knife made a grotesque sound as it pierced the concrete in front of me, only missing my head by a centimeter.

Light suddenly filled my vision, as I stumbled backwards, my balance disturbed. The sunlight hit me heavily like an accusatory glare as I instinctively stumbled from the alleyways.

I only caught sight of a single second of terror filling Mana's eyes as the met mine before I moved away yet again, a pair of shimmering knives coming my way.

Practically ripping my gun from its holster, I swung it around to hit the knives and divert them just enough for me to perhaps catch one to defend myself in this desperate situation, but at that point, it was too late. Lulubell was already on me.

Before I had a chance to react, something slammed against my throat with inhuman force. Her knee, I should prosume. Pain was not as immediately as the effect, but as soon as my body slammed heavily against the concrete pavement the sparks of agonizing pain in the form of heavy purple bruises on my back were beginning to show.

For a second, Lulu Bell herself appeared a mere shadow against the bright sky and my ears rang momentarily from the head trauma I probably endured.

I saw her lips move. She was saying something to me but I did not hear it. Nonetheless, I stole that opportunity to speak to here, despite the overwhelming pressure placed upon my throat by her foot and my hands instinctively reaching up to claw at her ankles.

She had me in a corner, so I used the age old strategy of distracting the woman with good social interaction, one of Lulu Bell's only weak points.

"S-So then-!" I choked out, heavy breaths racking my chest, "I-I see even your institution h-has gone to the d-dogs, Duchess-!"

And as expected, further pressure was applied. The woman growled in irritation, her glare turning to fire.

"Don't mock me, Earl." She snapped, her sharp teeth visible through her lips, "This is not my fault, but your own. A contract like yours was terminated to moment you dare lay hands upon our king!"

"W-What, without you leader, you fall into entropy? Shame! I thought you were more than a mindless drone, once, but I guess I was wrong!"

Not a second afterwards, her gun was raised at the ready.

"I want to be the one." She hissed coldly as she cocked the pistol, "I want to be the one to kill you!"

I knew by the way her eyes resembled those of her chimera that she was being serious, declaring a desire straight and raw from her stone cold heart and when my cold fingers at last gripped the cold metal of a knife blade built, all I could do was grin.

"Get in line, love."

I did not even dare think twice about letting her own knife blade sink as deeply into her slim little ankle as far as it would go. It's not even as though it would leave a scar or a blemish upon her perfect skin, but she might need to find some new boots.

The same for when she retracted her foot and shouted in pain. I should imagine it hurt as I got her right in between her bones but I wasn't about to stick around to see the true effects of it.

Rushing to the side, I did not hesitate to force myself to my feet and strike her in her wrist, forcing the pistol from her death grip and taking it immediately into my own.

Holding the gun that was now mine at the ready, I backed away as quickly as I could, only slightly fearing the look in Lulu Bell's eye and whispered a choice incantation.

"Cancel."

I whispered this because I knew the true reason why Lulu Bell attacked me.

It was not because she actually intended to kill me, but rather to incapacitate me and drag me back to the prison to complete my sentence and get publicly executed, as tradition would want.

But as I prepared my injured body for a rather long running battle against my old playmate, I confirmed one of two things in my mind.

Once, there was no way the Royal Guard would break with tradition.

Two, there was no way in hell I was going back to that wretched prison.

The castle never changed.

I know how the stories go, that all man made structures would fade in time, be it knocked down by enemy soldiers or giving way to erosion, but not so with a piece of architecture this elaborate. It's foundation's ran far deeper than the roots of a mighty tree; Far too deep to be removed even by the mightiest of men.

Perhaps this was not a physical castle, but the dungeon like state of mind for every citizen was just as real and imprisoning.

This so very great but so very foolhardy people could invent the most glorious of spectacles but could scarcely see anything but darkness beyond their noses.

This self centered people would never change, never learn, but more specifically, would never listen.

The Chimera were all around, baring their teeth, snarling, green saliva falling down their chins as they eyed me hungrily. Yet they didn't attack. They didn't attack because Lulu Bell hadn't told them to.

She was being truthful when she said she wanted to finish me off with her own two hands.

Lulu Bell was not going to listen to logic. That much was clear. Perhaps I would have to beat it into her.

It would not be the first time I had to do so and certainly would not be the last.

Even in my injured state, I was so very positive I could pull it off.

No, not weak and childish me, but the Great Millennium Earl, the terror of Wonderland.

"Not so fast, Earl! Cease this at once, Lulu Bell!"

Both our heads jerked to the right immediately at the familiar voice.

There at the opening where that alleyway met the concrete street, at the border between pure shadow and rageful sunlight, stood the form of the Bandersnatch, Tykki, a man I knew all too well.

"We won't have that just yet!" He declared all too loudly, ever smirking coyly as he eyed the both of us perceptibly, "We do not wish to bring any harm to the people of the slums! We only came for a convict!"

Of course, I thought, he wants to protect the reputation of the Royal Guard in this time of social and economic entropy. They might as well have been the only form of authority or protection the people of Wonderland had at this point so it would not be wise to lose it.

Even a wretched villain like me recognized that. Nonetheless, I was not going back under any circumstances. He had his fun, torturing me in that dungeon and I was not about to give him the same privilege again.

But he tightened his arms and pulled them closer to his chest. It was then that I realized he had taken a hostage. The Bandersnatch never acted so coy if he hadn't.

Pinned against a knife blade and Tykki's chest was Mana, looking to the left and right, appearing rather uncomfortable and confused rather than scared in his current predicament.

Why did he look so sure of himself, like he were confident he would escape from this situation unharmed? Did he think I, having admitted being Nea, would save him?

If the thought even crossed his ignorant little mind, I was confident he could not be more sorely mistaken.

As I had said before, Nea was dead.

He was not going to save his dear twin now. No one was.

"Go on. Kill him." I smirked, gesturing to Mana, "Nothing shall stop you, Bandersnatch."

"Now now, tame your silver tongue." He replied as he pulled the knife closer to Mana's throat, said hostage gasping in response, "I know how you work. If he wasn't important to you, you would not have come for him."

"He is not important."

"And yet you came for him, whoever he is."

"He… He is my twin…." I alas said with a sigh, closing my eyes to shield myself from the hope that sprung up in Mana's gaze, "I only came for what I knew to be used against me in the Hatter's research. It's only wise to keep him from your clutches."

"What's this? A twin?" Tykki eyed Mana with curiosity, "But if your story is true, then why did you let him go at all? If you truly saw his value, then why did we ever get our hands on him?"

I bit back my words and cursed mentally. I didn't know why I let him go. I just hated Mana's existence. I saw it as so repulsive that I could hardly stand to be with it a moment longer so I cast him out.

Perhaps it was a mistake on my part.

Perhaps Nea was, once again, weak and childish.

Perhaps, but who was Tykki to judge. He was the one who let me escape to begin with.

They were all hypocrites, the lot of them.

"That's quite odd, Earl. Perhaps I expected too much." He shook his head, feigning disappointment, "But alas, it can't be helped."

Lifting his head, he looked to Lulu Bell.

"Duchess." He said, "Do what you must, but take him alive."

"With pleasure." She hissed as she narrowed her gaze back to me.

Once again, I steadied my breath and readied my gun. My previous intentions still stood and I would fight off the incoming attack no matter what it took.

Perhaps Nea could not do it, but I, the Great Earl, could.

It was just that simple.

Lulu Bell took two simple steps forward I took two steady steps back. The reason being, I was exhausted and didn't really have any real way or plan to fight her off, but surely the Earl could think of something.

The Earl had to. I would rather have died than go back to that wretched dungeon.

And not a second after that, Lulu Bell's and the Earl's duel got interrupted yet again.

"W-Wait!"

Looking to the side yet again, I caught the perfect view of the ensuing scene that lasted only a few mere moments.

Completely unprompted and seemingly without much reason, Mana slammed his elbow into the Bandersnatch's stomach.

He used the momentary shock to shove Tykki's knife away from his neck and rush forward out of his grasp to freedom.

Less freedom, more of forward to interrupt the Earl's and Lulu Bell's fight.

"Stop, you idiot!" Tykki called out as he to rushed forward, but Lulu Bell was on the scene far too quickly.

She immediately used her connection the Chimera's psyche to order one forward to attack the interrupting nuisance and one that resembled a winged white wolf rushed forward, growling and baring its shimmering teeth with the fullest intention to kill.

Mana saw this and lifted his arm to block.

The Chimera latched onto his arm with the full force of its mighty jaws and knocked Mana backwards.

He cried out. Yes, of course he did, but not because of pain or fear, because the creature had clearly broken his arm, but because of mere shock. It merely surprised him that the beast would attack him.

A moment passed when he locked eyes with the creature.

He looked it straight in the eyes and for a second, an air of peace fell over him as he lifted his free hand and placed it atop the white creatures head.

"Robin…" The name ghosted his lips for a mere heartbeat and in the next, the creature became completely still, meet his gaze almost as though it had been put under a spell.

And in the next, it let out the most hideous and agonized howl before suddenly becoming limp like a stuffed animal and collapsing on its side.

Its appearance began to change, to twist. Its bones began to snap like they were breaking, but in actuality, they were just retracting. Its back arched as, in a moment, white fur was replaced with pink skin and a large black nose was replaced with a small child's nose.

Suddenly, the creature returned to its original form upon passing out, its own original form being that of a familiar young girl.

Of course, I thought, he called out her original name and it snapped her out of her bloodlust. I thought Mana must have become acquainted with her before I or Lulu Bell interfered.

"I-I…." Mana stuttered as he held his broken arm and eyed the sleeping girl with a horrified and mournful expression, "I-I don't understand-!"

"You don't have to." Lulu Bell interrupted, immediately gaining his attention, "If you wish to know all that your dear twin has done, I will tell you. You see, when the great Millennium Earl would attack civilians, sometimes children would be left over. When this would happen, these children would become orphans with nowhere left to go, but he just could not leave well enough alone. Your dear brother would place the children under my care, where they are fed and housed, but legally they become living weapons. The Chimera."

And what made it all the more rich was how he looked to me with that look of betrayal and hurt like it were my fault Wonderland did this willingly to its orphans, like he actually expected better from me, like he expected me to be Nea when I told him ten times over that I had killed him.

Why on earth did he have any expectations for someone like me?

Why did he dare hold me at a standard?

"So then…." He breathed, his throat dry and his eyes unsure, "So then that creature in the orphanage…."

The Earl scoffed, finding it ridiculous that his pathetic brother would pity such a disgusting creature, "It was self defense."

"She was a child!"

A made a movement to retort when he suddenly got to his feet.

"No!" He declared, holding his hand in front of him to silence all those around, "You've said enough, Nea. You've all said more than enough! Now I've been pushed around since the moment I arrived in this wretched place and I am about sick of it!"

At this point it became quite obvious that Mana had become quite angry with them, but it was hardly intimidating, considering the fact that he was quite soft spoken and still caring the air of a very small child, but something was off now.

Those eyes had grown fierce and determined, trustworthy and all too sincere as he turned his gaze to Lulu Bell.

"Miss," He said with a jab of his finger, "I can assure you my brother did not commit the crime."

A small laugh escaped her lips, "What are you going on about, silly boy."

"Yah," I chimed in, "What are you talking about?"

"I can promise, I can swear, I can do anything you want, but I can assure you, my brother did not murder your masters."

"Well, um…." Now was Tykki's turn to speak, "No offense, but I don't think you really know what it is you speak-"

"I swear upon my life and my honor!" He declared loudly and suddenly, rushing forward and coming between me and Lulu Bell like he had some sort of reason to protect me from her, "If I am wrong, you are free to take his life and mine for his crimes, but if you merely give me the chance to prove my accusations correct, you will see that I tell you no lies and that my brother is innocent in all this!"

A silence. A quiet chilling empty air surrounded the scene.

I shifted my position from offense to that of defense. Placing a foot behind the other, I swallowed hard. Warily, I bit my lip hard till I tasted something of iron.

This person, twin brother or not, had a lot of guts speaking of oaths to people such as this.

A part of me, a pure and unbroken part in no way polluted by my actions and out of the Great Earl's reach, the memory of who I once was many years ago.

I knew the Nea Campbell who once existed would pity Mana for what was about to happen.

The Earl, however, was like a still lake.

He felt nothing at all.


	7. Chapter VII Part I

Chapter V

When the purest light flooded his empty mind, Nea tasted consciousness for the first time in several hours.

He had seen this garden of stars before.

It's beauty was deceptive. This was his chamber of torment.

Twinkling like fading beauty and arranged with no specific pattern, they contrasted the shadows and stood there, firmly rooted into the earth where they shouldn't be.

Their strong stems were tall towers of undressed and jagged stone that appeared like columns of smoke drawn in time.

The flow of the water in the man made waterway that they stood in had them spinning gently like a lullaby for an anxious infant or a beautiful and youthful ballerina dancing to an unheard melody.

He could not seem to tell which direction they were spinning. The sight was captivating, almost hypnotic. It was enough to make him dizzy.

As feeling retreated to his toes and fingertips, he became aware of the cold against his wrist and the air under his feet.

This was not the brief prison of peace he knew.

Where were the mages that kept him down? The seals that kept him under? The cords that kept his bound?

Why was he all alone? Where had they all gone?

The oil that he once slept in like a grave clung to his bronze locks and fell on his cheek like inhuman tears, tickling his skin.

He felt it slip down his body and off his few clothing articles then off the tips of his toes to a Nearby surface he hung above.

The rusty chains around his wrists that suspended him above the ground tightened abruptly, bringing him just a little closer to full consciousness.

His lungs burned as he gasped for air and coughed the oil from his throat.

He could hardly breath. He could hardly think.

Was he back? Was he back in the torture chamber? Was escaping all just a pleasant dream? But how? It all felt so unbearably real.

When those things were absent, it seemingly lessened the pain from the impact as his limp body suddenly hit the cold marble tiles without warning.

It felt as though his existence was fading from this world, like his body was covered in a thick mold that numbed his nerves and joints.

His skin was wet and raw, his golden eyes unfocused and bloodshot.

He cried out silently to the deaf ears he found at every corner of his world. He had never felt this weak before.

With a single shaking hand, he clawed for any sort of wet to hold onto as though he were falling from a very far height.

Once he found a spot in-between the tiles, he grabbed onto it with all his might and pulled himself forward without any clear knowledge of where exactly he was going.

He knew he had to get away.

That he was sure of.

But sure enough, a blurry image came into view, a figure of black smoke with no clear shape.

With the sound of light footsteps, it approached him and the meaningless image turned into the slim figure of a human being cloaked in pure black with a bird, a crow rooster on his shoulder.

His slick black hair was pulled from his forehead with a pin to reveal the toxic stigma crested upon his dark skin.

Despite the fatigue, Nea recognized him immediately.

Every citizen of Wonderland knew his face be it the personification of their wildest dreams or grandest nightmares.

As he pushed himself up with the palms of his hands, he gazed into the face of the man who had haunted him for several years, now.

Tykki Maximillion, otherwise known as the Bandersnatch.

He looked down on him as though he were a snake looking down on his prey with yellow eyes and teeth intended to tare innocence to shreds.

"Good morning Jabberwock." He hissed bitterly.

He immediately struck Nea across the face, knocking him off his balance and sending him to the smooth marble floor with a thud.

Nea felt something hard on his tongue. It was one of his teeth.

"What is this?" He gurgled out the words through saliva and blood.

"It's odd," Said Tykki as he circled around him "Seeing the once most powerful creature in all of Wonderland reduced to such a state. I don't consider it to be pleasant."

"What is this!?" He roared to the best of his ability, fully aware that if Tykki were allowed to ramble, he could seemingly ramble on forever.

He knelt down beside him and took hold of a chunk of his hair. He forced his head up so that their eyes met and to Nea's surprise, he saw pain.

Tykki was about to do something he really did not want to do.

That surprised him because he had seen this indifferent man murder several women and children with his own hands barring a perfect smile on his face, so why? What worse crime could possibly have made him hesitant?

"Your wish is granted." He breathed, breath laced heavily in the scent of cigarette smoke that made Nea sick "Your sentence has… changed."

The vicious smirk that overtook his face signaled to Nea that he had done something very wrong.

That smile was saved only for the most pathetic of humans. Corpses. Orphans. Victims of the most horrendous of crimes.

Why did he look at him like that? What sort of cruelty was he planning.

"Jabberwock," He muttered hauntingly as he stepped a few steps backwards like he was dancing "You've lost all contact with your power."

That caught Nea off guard. His shallow gaze wondered.

Now that he thought about it, it was true. He could not feel the gentle buzz in his skull or the fleet footed spiders under his skin. He felt odd without the electric energy in his blood that he endured for the last five years, numb almost as though he was floating.

He could no longer feel it's power, it's will. It was almost as though the power of the Jabberwock had disappeared completely from him.

What had happened? Had they detached him completely?

Otherwise, he would have blasted that smirk off of Tykki's face quicker than a lightning bolt.

"H-How did you…?".

"Because if it wasn't," He stated "You would have noticed the presence of… another."

"Another?".

"Yes."

He began to grow agitated by his beating about the bush.

"What are you talking about?!" He growled "Why am I awake?! Where is the Jabberwock's power?! What's happening?!".

With one swift motion, Tykki took hold of his shoulder and pulled his weak and vulnerable form from the the floor.

"For a free man," He said as he began to walk "You talk far too much."

He pulled him along to a place Nea knew not. He hardly had either the strength or will to resist.

The sharp turns and changing of directions made him nauseous, even if they were few. The sound of a metal gate opening wide echoed in the hardly conscious corners of his aching mind.

There were alien smells and sounds all around him like a choir or a beautiful painting blurred by water, blending all the wrong colours into a ghastly shade of grey.

"We have reason to believe you did not commit the crime. A testimony."

Nea had just about grown completely tired of this joke.

Yes, the king was a monster but he at least deserved the respect of his death being treated with truth.

He turned around sharply, preparing to reply.

"What the hell kind of-!"

"Mine."

And just like that, with a single hardly audible word, the murderer was silenced.

He could not speak nor did he want to because he turned around to see that Tykki were nowhere to be seen. That was not the problem. They always had the tendency to do that but that was not the problem.

He looked into the eyes of himself. A kinder softer version of himself-

He didn't, couldn't, wouldn't believe what he saw-

This was, undoubtedly, a trick of some sort in his mind but who could have conjured this up? No one knew about him but himself.

What was this person he saw before him and why did it seem so real?

"…..Mana?"

The name slipped past his lips so easily, it scared him.

And with that breath, the scene changed and the lights were gone.

All was different.

Relief flooded Nea's mind upon the realization that this wasn't real.

This weakness was an illusion. He just had to find a way out.

This was all an illusion conjured up by a sick mind. The hatter perhaps?

"Stop it, Tykki!"

"This illusion is stupid!"

Despite the fact that he knew for a fact that the fragile creature before him was an illusion created by the Bandersnatch himself, ever since it lay it's soft golden eyes quite like his own on the environment like he really existed in this universe, Nea began to sweat profusely.

His hands were cold. They shook violently and his knees felt weak. He hadn't felt this nervous since royal guard first presented him to late king. He threw up twice.

Of course, he pinned this on the illusion as well even though there had never been a single instance that one of Tykki's had affected him physically. Not one time.

"Erase it! It doesn't belong here!"

It was almost as though others was no escape at all with thoughts like these making the illusion of freedom that much less beautiful.

It was at that moment that he became just that more aware of the closing distance between the do called illusion and himself.

He stiffened.

"Why won't you disappear?"

"Because I am not an illusion." He replied, his voice sounding hoarse and dry.

"You should not be here."

For a moment, he began to feel brave and he turned his head to the one who claimed to be his twin brother.

He just assumed it would not break him to see him again either way. He had grown stronger since that time long ago amongst the flower beds of pink chrysanthemums.

"Neither should you."

Sudden physical contact shocked him. He turned to find the so called illusions hand out reached to touch his ice cold cheek.

The warmth of his touch and the kindness in his eyes was undeniably real. Something about it brought him back to his senses if only for a moment.

"You are bleeding…" He breathed gently "Who did this to you?"

That action brought back memories. Despite his immaturity and overall childlike nature, the Mana he knew had his rare moments when he would play the elder sibling.

Smirking briefly, he pushed his hand away gently just to look off the the light that now turned the sky bright blue.

"It does not matter."

"It does."

Mana retracted his hand further with an element of utter sadness in his features.

He was remembering things, to. Tears spilled over the his eyelids as all the guilt returned to him with a brutal vengeance.

"I'm sorry…. I'm so sorry…. I really should have gone with you…."

"Yes."

No longer desiring any more proof, he pulled his brother into a hesitant and cold embrace.

"You probably should have."

"Oh, what a sight to behold~!"

The sudden booming tone of Cyril all around him snapped him out of his haze as pushed Mana to a safe distance away and then step in front of him as a sort of guard because even with his power gone, he still believed he could defend Manda from his otherworldly acquaintance.

"Hatter!"

He felt a spontaneous and very strong breeze touch past his face, drawing his attention to one specific spot.

The scent of flowers was overtaken the smell of burnt flesh and meat. It made him sick to his stomach.

"A reunion. A bond." An all too familiar smoke like being took shape on the center of the rooftop, clearing lightly to reveal the solid form of a heart shaped door. "It is almost enough to make me jealous~!"

"Cheshire's door…?" Nea recognized it as the portals created by Cyril's daughter. "What is this?!"

"Well," Soon enough, Cyril materialized beside it like he had been standing there the whole time and, to Nea's remorse, he probably was. "Now that it's here, we have no choice but to pay the toll."

"The toll?" Nea paused for a moment before reaching into his mouth and taking out the tooth Tykki had knocked out a little bit previous to that "Will this suffice?"

Cyril sneered "Not at all."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure!"

Nea smirked at his growing irritation. He knew how much the man despised his daughter's obvious favouritism.

"It will complete her baby teeth collection."

"No part of your bloody body will pay the toll!"

And yet, he knew what he truly meant and let the tooth fall from his hand and hit the ground.

"It won't work because I'm not the Jabberwock anymore," He hissed soberly "Right?"

Cyril, to, sobered and nodded.

Despite the fact that Nea loathed what his life had become, being imprisoned in a room, being drained of life, being used as a vessel for the energy of the whole city, now that it was gone, he felt empty and weak like all of it was for nothing.

Somehow, he felt disappointed.

"But don't be so blue." Tykki materialized on the other side of the door, looking far more pleased than his brother in a sickening manner "We would not have summoned her door if we didn't have a sufficient… replacement."

Nea was just about to ask what he meant by that when he shushed him with one finger on his lips and removed something from his coat.

"What….?"

And just as the words left his mouth, Tykki threw it as hard as was natural to him.

That's when it happened.

"…. No!"

Mana found it very suspicious how the air was knocked out of him so completely and utterly, leaving his mouth feeling rusty and dry like the old cogs of a broken clock at the bottom of a river.

"…No! This isn't right!"

He was temporarily tied to the cold shingles by invisible bonds of aches and pains but once he found the strength returning to his arms, all gravity seemingly shifted and his body felt lighter than air but only for one mystical moment.

"How could you do this!?"

The ringing in his ears was not a melody he liked to hear so he was thankful when it began to fade along with the numbness that had consumed his whole being.

But to his awe and slight horror, he was screaming.

He did not know what caused it but he was screaming very loudly till it was hardly audible but he did not know how to stop.

But alongside this was one distinguishable best, the heat of another, the heat of his brother beside him.

That made him happy and yet, why was he screaming?

"He is your identical twin brother, correct?" Tykki grinned, taking a few easy steps forward "For years, scientist have been trying to clone those worthy of being vessels but they found nothing but failure. So why not let nature do it instead?"

Nea glared daggers at him furiously, kneeling beside the trembling form of his brother.

"You monster…." He growled "I'll kill you!"

Tykki eyed the odd Mana individual and the yellow burns of power that now clawed over his skin like scars.

The Jabberwock was now infesting and infecting his pure and fragile body with no intention of holding back. That is what happens when a carrier of the portal pathogen receives the signal injection that called the star into his body completely.

But for the most part, this ceremony was done in a safer place. He guessed they'd have to blame it on some sort of gas leak that broke out.

"For the most part, the Jabberwock's family is supposed to receive special protection." Cyril mused "But when said Jabberwock slaughters the whole royal family, I guess that policy is nullified."

"No, Cyril." Tykki snapped his way "We have the brothers testimony that he is innocent, so to appease the people and do the right thing, the Jabberwock will be kept in his torture chamber and giving a chance to prove his innocence."

"I killed them!" The once very powerful Jabberwock was now on his feet, facing them "I am guilty of the crime!"

"But according to him," Tykki grinned as he pointed to Mana "You did nothing of the sort."

"Why does his testimony even matter?"

"It is simple. He asked nicely that we believe him."

"You're insane… What is this that the law plays games?!"

"No," He looked him straight in the eyes and for a moment, Nea thought he saw a hint of regret but he dismissed it immediately "I'm just following orders. "

"Hurry this up, Tykki." Cyril groaned as he walked "Or we'll be late for tea."

"Right." Tykki sighed as he suddenly turned to face Mana who graveled on the floor in a fetal position.

"Don't touch him. " Nea stepped forward as well to block his path.

But that's when he spoke.

"Wait!" He yelped, agony evident in his frantic tone "Just wait!"

"…Yes, Jabberwock?" Tykki stepped in front of him like he didn't mean any harm to his person and spoke softly.

"I… You said I'd be the Jabberwock-!" He choked out, his face down and fingers clawing into the shingles desperately as the presence of a supernova become ever more present in his body by every second. "That… That he would not have to die….. Can I still-?!"

"Yes. As was promised. You will become the Jabberwock by becoming his replacement by taking his torture chamber till he comes to save you." He said "Because, you see, I was there when the royal family was slaughtered and I have absolutely no idea how this was faked so, in the end, only your brother can prove his innocence and that's exactly the opportunity he was given."

His voice was soothing, reassuring, relaxing. Any fears he once held close sense to slip from his fingers like sand, out of sight, out of mind. For one moment, he was completely out of his mind, clawing at the edges that was completely out of sight.

He took a steady deep breath and exhaled like it was his last breath and pushed himself up to a sitting position.

He reached out to grab a Nearby shard of a broken shingle. His long bronze hair he pulled into the shaking grasp of the other hand.

"Let it be, then."

In a second, he cut his hair short with the shingles sharp edge, all to much like Nea's own.

And for that one second, all laws and respect aside, he promised he'd find a way to destroy the royal guard. Every last one of them.

At one moment in time, he would have expected something like this willingly, thinking he deserved it but now that they involved their petty thirst for revenge and the innocent life of his brother, things would be different.

Tykki nodded respectfully.

"Thank you for your cooperation." He spoke as he picked up ever strand of hair dropped and stood.

"Cyril." He opened his palm and the hair lifted from the ground as Cyril carried it from his hand to his own with telekinesis "This should be more than enough to get a you through."

"Thank you kindly." The hatter whispered as he turned to face Nea "It's time for us to go, once Jabberwock."

But to his surprise, said once Jabberwock looked distant, his mind on other things. His anger, perhaps, but with how empty and unhappy he had become over the last few months, Cyril found him oddly difficult to read.

Luckily for him, he said what was weighing on his mind.

"You idiot… You imbecile!" He snapped and Mana raised his head, aware he was referring to him but merely refused to look "Why on earth would you come here…?! What the hell were you thinking?!"

Any sane person could see past his hurtful words to see that he, himself was hurt, worried, afraid, weak and the only way he knew how to deal with it was to lash out.

He knew of nothing else to say under this full blue moon.

"What could possibly make you do this for me!?" At last losing himself to a fiery rage, he turned to face his brother to do something, hit him, to strike him, to make him hurt, to make him bleed, anything, "I hate you! I-!"

But what he hadn't seen coming was that Mana had approached him first and was but a few inches away.

The words died in his throat.

He just stood there stiffly, his newly cut bangs falling over his face, hiding his eyes.

It was unsettling to see him so still. For a moment, he had the appearance of one of those old black and white photos from the attic. For just one moment, he looked dead.

"Mother passed away in her sleep but a few days ago, Nea."

It was only now that Nea saw first hand how hard it was for him to admit it.

"…What?"

"I have nothing… else…" He continued, slowly lifting his head to reveal his eyes to reveal not tears, but blood, black liquid and other things completely impossible to recognize "So… I don't... really… understand…."

"What are you saying…?"

"Why…. You're…. Yelling at me….."

At that moment, the heat, the radiation, the smell became close to unbearable but Nea didn't leave.

Mana raised his scraped and bruised hands to his brothers chest and just before he pushed him through Cheshire's doorway, he whispered these words.

"But please tell her that I'm so so sorry."

And with that, the dream ended and all faded back to black.

The game had begun and no one was to stop it.


	8. Chapter VIII Part I

Chapter VI

It didn't really matter at the moment but in a promising and overwhelmingly positive retrospect, upon swearing his dear younger twin brother's innocence in the crimes laid before him, Mana had absolutely no idea something as powerful and binding as a blood pact existed in this odd and beautiful world known simply as Wonderland.

Such a concept certainly did not exist in France, thank goodness. Only heaven knows what such a people would do with such a power. Anything the college student recalled were merely oaths that sent you to the giautine, not blood pacts that put your very soul and human nature in danger.

That is exactly and undoubtedly why, upon those odd people Nea referred to as the Bandersnatch and the Duchess of the Royal Guard respectively parroting his silly little oaths back at him in perfect unison, the illuminated white star mark appearing on his forearm pleasantly surprised Mana just about as much as it bitterly shocked Nea, because surely and certainly it had done just that.

Since the incident, and a good boring three hours had passed, Nea seemed more than a little bit intent on snapping like a rabid dog at him for breathing one volume too loudly or looking at the ground in a way he did not find appropriate. Nea's forehead began to crinkle, his eyebrows furrowed, and his eyes burnt with an overwhelming amount of irritation in that familiar way Mana knew as a child.

To be blunt, it was childishly adorable.

It was quite similar to how their own mother appeared when angered and as Nea had more than confirmed himself to be the brother Mana lost so long ago, Mana found absolutely no guilt in saying that.

Even without those key hints, it was unbearably obvious he was angry with him.

Strangely enough, he would have thought Nea would have done his very best to hide his every feeling instead of wearing his heart on his cheek in full display and silent protest because of the rage he felt for something he could not change.

After all, he had treated Mana terribly since he first walked through that portal so Mana could not imagine this recent occurrence was anything but a worsening of Nea's feelings for him, which was not good news.

In fact, Mana was quite positive the only thing keeping him from being severely injured was the simple taglines to the blood pact; That Nea himself could not interfere with the trial of the curse, so there for, Nea could not kill or harm Mana as of yet.

Simple. The trial is a chance to fulfill what he accused, or as that man called the Bandersnatch explained. It was requirements by Wonderland's law that it be cast upon those in Mana's situation, in the situation of knowing truth and knowing they can prove it but not having the time.

Only this was an unusual concept to Mana as he knew not this place where the criminals lived by morals and the law played games. Perhaps this was what was meant by a twisted reality and an entirely new dimension.

He would be lying if he said it didn't hurt when they put the star in him.

It was not the most painful thing he experienced, but it did hurt.

It was odd feeling the warmth of light under his skin. He felt powerful, like he could do anything.

Like he could save his brother.

That was right.

He made an oath.

He would do it.

He had to.

Otherwise, he would die.

If Mana failed, however, then the parasite known as the blood pact would kill him and Nea would be executed publicly for the crimes he was wrongfully accused of.

Innocence would die shamefully for the slaughter of the entire royal family and Mana, someone who had scarcely done a single righteous act in his entire life, would die swiftly like pathetic and useless creature he was.

But one thing was for sure. Mana would not have changed a single thing about the contract. If Nea had to die for something he didn't do, then Mana would quite like to die with him.

He didn't work his sanity away every day since his brother's disappearance since they were mere children just to watch his own brother die again.

The young man didn't think he could take it. He wouldn't take it.

Mana would prove his innocence no matter what the cost.

But, as previously stated, Nea was less than content with this set up, as he put it.

Mana hardly needed to see the self proclaimed villain in sleeping clothes and disheveled hair pace the guest room he was situated quite suddenly in for the fiftieth time to realize that.

Oh yes. He was also taken back into the house he had been kicked out of on such a short notice. Mana was once again forced into the quite lavish mansion called the moving house against his will.

The woman called Fiona set everything up and led him with kind words and assurances of safety into a rather dark cellar like place. She said it was not intended to be a guest room as the great Millennium Earl was never friendly enough with anyone to possibly invite them over to his house and those who were lucky enough to receive the honor were usually women and stayed in the Earl's own room.

Mana did not quite understand what she meant by such odd sounding words but he didn't dare concern himself with it a moment longer because for the first time in a long time, Mana was experiencing genuine joy.

Not hope. He did not hope because his goal, his dream, his truest desire was not out of his grasp. It had been fulfilled.

Glee pulsed through the veins of his heart, engulfing his identity, breaking down his walls, engulfing him.

How could he not rejoice, just this once, in his brother's downfall, especially when said brother was being so utterly silly these days, what with pretending to be some villain of grand proportions any all.

It didn't really matter at the moment but in a promising and overwhelmingly positive retrospect, Nea hardly gave Mana much of a choice.

His smile would not falter for the many hours to come.

"Nue, what happened to you, anyway? Why is your every action so wrong? Why has everything about you become so fake?"

Mana never received a response. He didn't expect to.

Upon saying those words, Nea left the room with an abrupt slam of the door and Mana found himself alone with his thoughts yet again. In bitter actuality, it wasn't any different with Nea in the room, anyway.

It was an honest question. He saw so clearly the force, he saw the effort to put up a front, how Nea seemed to read his every intention straight from the pages of an invisible script.

Silly little Nea. The younger twin could never have known how utterly useless and completely futile his attempts to hide from his only family were.

Mana saw straight through him vividly light light traveling easily through glass because of a simple reason. Mana himself had been a facade for so much of his life that it was nearly impossible for the young man not to recognised such hideous qualities in others.

It did not take him long to realize that little Robin, that sweet and adorable girl with a heavy accent was here in the moving house with him, trapped in a cell just like him.

Mana recognized her screams of rage through the walls. He recognized her voice easily amongst the panicked chatter of those surely trying to restrain her in her designated room of solitude.

It was strange. Mana had only known her for a little while and yet he knew just how terribly such a thing would go over with her. He didn't even need to hear her screaming at innocent servants to know that.

Not only that, but he felt a strange connection in his chest with the girl.

The girl he now saw as none other than his own precious daughter.

Daughter.

Robin Campbell.

It had a strange ring to it but he could get used to it.

He had not forgotten. He was completely serious when he said he would take her as his own.

Mana certainly saw no reason why it could be a problem, especially since this girl would not have a mother if she were his. Mana and Nea lived their entire lives without a father, being only raised by their dear mother and Mana could not dream of asking for a better parent and certainly not another one.

Mana could not only see anything wrong with the idea, but he also couldn't see how it was anything short of a great idea.

Nea heard. He just scoffed, saying it was a terrible, stupid idea and that it was ridiculous.

Mana had to disagree.

He could have been diluting himself, but Mana could have sworn his brother took the girl from the orphanage and brought her here for his sake.

That orphanage was a terrible wretched place. It disgusted Mana to think that that duchess, whoever she was, experimented on children, on young girls, just because they didn't have families to take care of them.

Mana wanted to steal Robin from such a terrible place, so when he heard her voice, he found himself pleasantly surprised, overjoyed even within the miserable confinements of his cell.

But the way Nea handled the situation confused him.

Nea introduced her into the equation by telling him he was locking her up like a prisoner.

He told him like he would be hated for it. Nea acted as though Mana would hate him so when Mana thanked him genuinely in sharp contrast to his expectations, Nea seemed flustered, confused, unable to know what to do.

He hadn't talked of it sense but Mana could not help but wonder.

Could it be that Nea saved Robin for his sake?

Could it be that he brought her to safety as an apology for what he did to that chimera girl in the orphanage?

Perhaps they were but delusions of love. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking and yet the young man could not help but wonder.

But alas that would not get him very far in his current predicament.

The location in an uncharted spacetime known as the Moving House was truly a lovely and exquisite sort of place, a sort of platform for the most unusual, supernatural and undesirable of things to coexist and yet never truly collide or disturb each other, like electrons elipsing around the nucleus, in perfect harmony in a way except nothing quite that intimate. It was quite like a dream, the only downside being that the occupants were perpetually sleeping, enjoying the finest of lavish luxuries but hardly conscious enough to truly understand them.

Somehow, it was like no matter how close you were to a person and no matter how much you cared, they could scarcely hear your voice over the mile and century distance between you.

Mana wanted to catch up. He so badly wanted to tear at the distance, rip the veil and see what it was that he missed but somehow, in this lovely moving house where even the poorest could live as royalty, the just couldn't, like chains of anxiety, invisible though they may be, held him in place.

Perhaps that was what made this house so lonely.

A dream come true but never truly shared and Mana didn't think he could handle it a moment longer.

This atmosphere was nothing short of extravagantly suffocating in every way and he couldn't take it anymore. It was like reliving the days without Nea, being so close and yet so far away all at once.

It took a great deal of self control to not close the distance himself, to take him by the collar and beg to be acknowledged to know that the euphoria that came from finding him in this wretched place was not just a dream.

He didn't want it to be a dream.

The mere idea of waking up from this stone cold concrete cell in his bed back home, placed in a house full of undead strangers that never cared for him the slightest bit terrified him, shook him down to his bones.

Death would surely be worse.

Death would be worse.

It was a simple fact and it would be told as such.

No matter what happened, no matter how cold Nea was and no matter how he mistreated Mana, Mana would die to protect all that came about in these past few days.

Surely he would.

He had to.


	9. Intermission

"Now listen and listen well."

"Only once will I explain."

"To rid you of ignorance."

"To spare you the pain."

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves "

"Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:"

"All mimsy were the borogoves,"

"And the mome raths outgrabe."

"The blood you bled was planned."

"Tears to be shed desired."

"Our lawful pleasure is grand."

"His untimely demise admired."

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!"

"The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!"

"Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun,"

"The frumious Bandersnatch!"

"When black Stars fall,"

"When men's fingers grow anxious,"

"When we lose it all."

"When earthly kings are gracious."

"He took his vorpal sword in hand;"

"Long time the manxome foe he sought— "

"So rested he by the Tumtum tree"

" And stood awhile in thought."

"When eyes cry gold."

"When lips sing healing."

"When the cowards are bold."

"When the abyss brings meaning."

"And, as in uffish thought he stood,"

"The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,"

"Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,"

"And burbled as it came."

"When the sky gives rain."

"When children lead the strong."

"When we never speak again."

"When all our teeth have gone."

"One, two! One, two! And through and through"

"The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!'

"He left it dead, and with its head"

"He went galumphing back."

"When that time should arrive"

"And you should see it come".

"When daft men come alive"

"And wise men drink rum."

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? "

" Come to my arms, my beamish boy!"

" O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!".

"He chortled in his joy."

"Your skin will be brittle."

"You'll lay mad on the stone."

"Your comfort will be little."

"You will be broken and alone."

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves ."

"Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:"

"All mimsy were the borogoves,"

"And the mome raths outgrabe."

"Now listen and listen well."

"Only once will I explain."

"To rid you of ignorance."

"To spare you the pain."

"I know that you mourn."

"Your face is wet with agony."

"But your fate is inevitably"

"To become the next of the Jabberwocky"


	10. Epilogue

The courtyard of the castle belonging to none other than the current royal family of Wonderland may have been very hot this time of year because of the sealed limestone walls and the heavy sunlight pouring in through the large ceiling of stained glass all the hours of the day with no relief but a certain Lady of Wonderland had found no better place to practice her newfound hobby.

At the center of the grand building and all its majesty, surrounded by the support of gothic arches and marble pillars of ashen gray lay a large oval clearing of healthy and peaceful plant life.

Nightingales sang their soft melody from behind the bars of a birdcage hung on the sturdy branches of gentle pink and lavender wisteria trees purchased straight from Nol.

Delicate ferns and royal blue seventeenth century tulip bulbs grew in their chosen spots beside the smooth flint and shimmering obsidian set all along the man made river of quiet and crystal clear waters.

Bouquets of lilies of the valley, violets, grand flowerbeds of magenta thistles, turquoise roses and yellow carnations lined the courtyard like rolling hills in the valleys of Underland. Chocolate cosmos melted in the heat but still remained beautiful despite dripping on the pure white Heartily flowers underneath.

Cherry blossoms in full bloom shed their petals like snowflakes in the winter and a halo, a soft pink blanket was created all around its trunk.

Beside those delicate trees was a spot dedicated purely to the ruby, amethyst, diamond and citrine chrysanthemum flowers, a personal addition done by the the current Jabberwock, himself. No one dare ask him why and no one ever would.

The only company for the lonely weeping willow was a healthy bush of blushing Hydrangeas along with tall and short grasses from Bine, Cattails and hollow reeds.

All this wonder was viewed by a young and crippled Lady of Wonderland, Lenalee inside the comfort of a pure white gazebo set at the center of the garden where there was a delicate raise in the ground.

Lenalee had a gentle doll like appearance, a pale face, long black hair and gentle wise eyes. To some, she reminded them of tragedy and wanted nothing to do with her but to others, she resembled a beautiful and serene doe, something to be protected and adored.

Sweat trickled down her forehead after several hours of practice in the heat.

In her exhausted arms was what any soldier would recognize as a common bow and arrow easily purchased from any weapons merchant.

An unladylike practice, yes and something that would be frowned upon but in her little garden, Lenalee could hardly bring herself to care.

The scene complimented by the cruel beating sunlight was a beautiful harmony of things hardly matched by anything found anywhere else in wonderland.

She was thankful she did not have seasonal allergies.

Pollen, tree sap, bitter and sweet scents of all that nature was and was made to be sat heavily in the humid air all around, almost overpowering, practically suffocating. Even the greatest of earthly beauties could not be seen through miserable heat and yet it was always preferred over the bland and lifeless prison of marble.

The late queen's personal garden was a thing treasured and much gold was put into its creation.

As was tradition, it was to be passed down to the next queen of Wonderland but being that the king remained unmarried, Lenalee was given the keys.

She observed her quiet haven through dark eyelashes and bangs, her head tilted downward and her arms resting on her lap.

She had no need for a place to sit being that her thin form was confined to a metal wheelchair she despised so much.

Lenalee was nineteen and an adult. She did not feel it was right to be reduced to this childlike state when she could hardly dress herself or make her way down a flight of stairs.

Over the last year, she had lost a considerable amount of weight and wore a loose dark gown go hide it but she knew there were those that noticed.

Years of training in the art of combat were ingrained into her very mind and falling back into those familiar grooves felt better than she first would have thought so every day she had free, she'd spend it here amongst the plant life, her arrows in one hand and her sketchbook in the other.

After a moment's rest, she turned her eyes back to her target, the pillar some distance away from her, several broken arrows lying near its unmovable feet.

Lifting her bow once more, she notched the bow and, with shaking and inexperienced arms, she drew it.

Exhale and inhale.

She saw the shimmering sharp tip of the arrow shaking uncontrollably along with her arms, twitching further and further off target.

The blisters on her hands and fingers made her grip painful and she bit her lip till she tasted the faintest hint of irony blood.

It bothered Lenalee to no end how hard it was.

Why couldn't she aim? Why couldn't she remain focused? Why couldn't she ever hit the target?

Anger burned inside of her chest at her own uselessness, the pointless ragdoll she had become?

Before all this, she was a soldier, she was strong and respected, someone her brother could be proud of and now she was nothing.

She hated herself and the tears tickling her eyelids.

Now Lenalee was just a girl. Nothing more, nothing less.

The sound of a dried leaf crunching under a foot startled her and she released the arrow and bowstring without thinking.

The wind the arrow created by shooting across the open air rustled the sketched and drawing utensils by her. It was a force she was not prepared for. It had startled her just as much as the sound she had heard and, for a few brief moments, her heart raced but it was oddly pleasant.

The arrow she had fired hit some distance away from her target pillar and clattered weakly on the marble floors where it fell still.

It was unbroken. That was good as she only had about six left in her quiver and she did not like to waste.

But after being reassured of her arrow, she lifted her eyes to find whatever it was that had made the sound to begin with, be it just her imagination or a wild animal that had slipped in somehow.

She turned to her left, a ninety degree turn where the view of her gardens gates were best seen. It did not take long to see her audience.

From under the light from the red paine in her gardens ceiling, her gaze was met with the golden eyes akin to a something born in the wilds of nature.

Bright eyes that belonged to a familiar man's form that never failed to make her stomach turn sour.

It was the same face, the same voice, the same eyes, the same everything and that's why Lenalee didn't lower her bow when she recognized him.

She did not find his presence pleasant in least even though knowing full well that this was not the man that had taken her legs from her but rather the one that would give up anything and everything for him.

Mana. The twin brother of that wretched Earl.

Lenalee looked to see the current vessel of the Jabberwock, Mana standing very still like a rabbit that caught sight of its hunter.

There was a brief silence as the Lady of Wonderland let her habitual anger cool. Mana had never actually wronged her. In fact, he had never really spoken to her so there was no real reason for it.

She lowered her bow before she finally addressed her visitor.

"You." She spoke coldly "What are you doing here?"

He appeared awkward, like he hadn't really planned for anyone to be here. He pulled his arms behind his back, glanced from side to side and shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"The gate." he replied quietly "It was unlocked…"

She could confirm his words by the light agonized whine of the rusted hinges and the way it seemed to sway very very lightly in a nonexistent breeze.

The girl scolded herself even though she could have sworn she had locked it with the bronze key she kept on her bracelet.

She was usually not this irresponsible.

"I see that." She leaned forward to notch another arrow to contiNue her hobby, thinking he would leave at her obvious discomfort "But what are you still doing here?"

But with a slip of her hand, Lenalee had knocked the arrow from her lap by accident and it fell out of her reach quickly.

"Oh, of all the-!" She blurted as it tumbled down the steps and onto the grass.

She did not have the energy to retrieve it so she just let her head rest back with a long and aggravated sigh.

It was difficult to be optimistic and hope for a brighter future when you could hardly even see the possibility of light in your own.

For a moment, she contemplated giving up for today and going back to her room but she found that she hardly had enough energy to do that either.

Maybe she would just sit there for a while, all alone in her garden.

"Excuse me." Spoke a kind voice.

Lenalee lowered her head only see Mana once more except this time, he was right in front of her with her dropped arrow in his outstretched palm.

She did not take it back.

She wanted to feel threatened, she really did but something was so gentle about his presence, far more so than he she truly despised, that she just couldn't.

He had kinder eyes, though no less on fire and a childlike way of carrying himself though no less wise.

Other differences in appearance such as longer hair and a very unhealthy complexion seemed to make a world of a difference up close. She almost could not see anyone but the current Jabberwock in his face.

Actually, she began to feel a slight pang of concern because the man in front of her wore a leather coat over a thick vest over a long sleeve black shirt on a ninety degree day.

Perhaps the Jabberwock, the grounded star hidden within that fragile frame, kept him from passing out from heatstroke.

Gratefully, she took the arrow from his palm.

"Thank you." She said.

At that, he looked perplexed, seemingly confused she spoke to him at all but his features softened as he spoke again.

"Your grace," he said with a polite bow "Are you having difficulty with your new hobby?"

"Well that's certainly direct."

"I mean no offense, of course."

"Of course you don't." She replied, feigning hurt feelings which Mana almost seemed to think real. "Back on subject, who sent you?"

He furrowed his brows "Pardon?"

"Don't play dumb." Said Lenalee absently "I know that the Bandersnatch, the Hatter and the twins have all been trying to disarm me for months." She gestured to her bow for the Jabberwock to understand her point. "I'm just wondering which one sent you."

"Disarm you?" He asked, his expression that of a scared child "Why would I want to do that?".

"We needn't dwell." She sighed in exhaustion because if he were lying, he was an excellent liar and she knew that was not true from all she heard "Just go locate one of the men I mentioned and tell them that their tactics will not scare me from my unladylike sport."

"Unladylike sport?"

"Good day and goodbye!" She declared in her strongest voice and awaited the man's leave for the second time today.

It was funny how the title of monarch couldn't even get people to do what she wanted. If even that couldn't, then whatever could?

"Well that's completely ridiculous!"

Lenalee was surprised, finding that he did not know when to leave when he was not wanted or how to properly respond to her statement.

"I know well enough that a true lady should not train with a weapon," He stated with a sort of distant but genuine fire in his eyes like he was defending his most treasured moral ground or something "But I also know by experience that 'true ladies' are some of the most cruel, horrible, hard hearted, uncaring, underhanded, cowardly, selfish, idiotic, deceitful, manipulative, wretched, downright evil…!"

And then he paused which Lenalee soon realized was because he had completely forgotten she existed in his rant. In fact, he was looking at the weeping willow tree in the distance like he was trying to hold a strong argument with it.

It was at moments like these that even the most serious person could do nothing to stifle their laugh.

She had heard many men condemn her hobby and just as many women approve of it for a variety of reasons such as equal rights for women or because she herself wanted to do it but never had she ever come across a person, a man no less, who approved of her hobby because he seemed to despise ladylike women more than anything.

This was certainly a new and refreshing viewpoint.

But Mana quickly realized he had said too much and became embarrassed , looking to the grass and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"Is that so?" She asked as she wiped the tear from her eyes when her laughter died down "So do you hate me, then?"

"Oh no, never." Was Mana's quick and utterly serious reply as he straightened his posture and dusted off his coat, not even attempting to deny that he hated ladylike women "You are far more a girl than you are a lady."

Lenalee was not sure whether or not that was an insult or a compliment. It was her reflex to believe her was calling her a child but her suspicions died when she recalled the list of his problems with lady kind.

"That is to say-!" His eyes wandered elsewhere as he began to sputter, thinking he had insulted her in some way. "What I mean is-!"

"The answer is yes."

His whole body stood still like a photographic image as he awaited her response warily.

She was almost tempted to play with him a bit, maybe tell him that she'd sentence him to death if he kept this up but being no fan of pranks, herself, Lenalee elaborated.

"About before." She stated "I am having difficulty with my hobby."

"...Truly?"

"I am not a lady," She smiled. "Why would I lie?"

A ghost of a smile was returned to her.

"Would…" He paused to motion to her target pillar "Would you mind showing me?"

Lenalee drew her bow once more as an example to him who asked.

He took this as permission to stand beside her in the shade of the gazebo which he was probably more than thankful for in this sort of vile heat.

At the beginning of every draw, it was almost easy for Lenalee. Her hands were still and her arms were confident. The arrow remained on target.

But not a moment afterwards, her hands begin to sweat and slip, her weak muscles become twitchy and unreliable. She could hardly see her target much less keep her arrow on target.

And just when her anger began to build up, she felt the soft touch of a hand on her shoulder.

She took a sharp intake of breath.

Almost as though every physical fiber of her her being was commanded to, her body tensed up. Even now, she was hardly comfortable with physical touch, much less someone she knew so little like Mana.

They were wretched memories she knew she could never forget no matter how hard she tried, a constant stain upon what could have been good fortune.

Even if his intentions were good and she was sure they were as he was merely trying to position her arms to the proper arching form, the poor girl could not bring herself to tolerate it and, involuntary jerked away from him.

But of course he could practically read her mind because she doubted she could make it any more obvious what she was thinking of him.

Mana retracted his gloved hand quickly as though he had been burnt.

"I apologize. That was rash of me." He said quickly, his eyes unsure and weighted with sadness that Lenalee knew she caused.

For that, she felt a pang of guilt because of how often she had seen that heavy sorrow in her own features.

"It's alright."

After recovering his usual bright smile, Mana took a few steps back and lifted his own arms to the ideal form that any archer should aim for, steady arms and confident hands.

And, as most in the castle had grown used to seeing, the current Jabberwock materialized a weapon from thin air.

The Jabberwock did gift its vessels the ability to harness its power in a safe form, to minimize collateral damage and to increase accuracy of its will fulfilled.

It was rare and only when the goals of the vessel were the same as the Jabberwocks and that's why Mana was considered by most to be a very special case.

Wonderlands star gave the gift of an elegant bow that the man currently held in his hands, a weapon seemingly made from pure crystal lightning and drawn with a golden bow string.

The arrows never had perceivable form till the bow was drawn and when it was, what appeared to be a piece of star light lay at the fingertips of the wielder.

It always bothered Lenalee how she could never seem to concentrate enough to properly perceive the form of Mana's light arrows. They were like the image of the moon being reflected off the waters of a lake, changing and shifting every second.

And then there was always the smell.

That unpleasant smell of something natural and pure being burnt. It was not like burnt rubber or even burnt food. It smelled of burnt flesh and somehow it worried her even if she had no reason for concern.

Sometimes, she really didn't understand herself.

"In my short time as an archer," Mana began with a light smile "I think I have learned a few things of value but who's to say, really."

Almost shyly, Lenalee tried to mimic his form and drew her notched bow, feeling like she was a schoolgirl once again.

"It is a form of offense but it is less about force than it is about form."

"How is this?"

Her cast a glance towards her.

"You were a soldier? You fought professionally?"

"Yes. " She breathed, thinking back on the time as though it were another millennium "I was the sister of a lowly tomb guardian. I did it for the honor, not the money."

"I know it's hard to forget." He replied in a soft voice, like he was speaking with a child "The motions and habits you've formed and perfected over the years are difficult things to let go of."

"No, I've closed the door on that." She shook her head in denial as her sweaty sore fingers let the arrow fly at last "It's just impossible…"

The little wooden arrow flew at such unexceptional speeds as it made its way to nose dive into the earth like all her other failed attempts that Lenalee could not help but feel unbearably disappointed in herself.

But the pit in her chest filled up just a little when her own pathetic arrow was shot several yards away and into her target pillar by none other than a shimmering arrow of light, making patterns in the broken stone like the webs of a spider.

It disappeared as though it had never existed and her arrow hit the stone floor but it had left far too much of an impact to completely disappear.

A brief pause as she turned to see Mana lower his bow.

"I said difficult." He smiled "Not impossible."

"As a soldier, you relied on brute force I'm sure." He drew and aimed but this time with closed eyes "But an arrow could never deal damage the same as any weapons you used though it can be equally as deadly."

It was true that her legs were used as her greatest weapon and that she relied mainly on physical strength to defeat her opponents.

Funny how all that work could be rendered as meaningless in one night.

"It matters less that you hit the target," He said "And more that you have proper form."

"But," She questioned "If I don't hit the target then what is the point of-!"

She was met with a gloved finger close to her lips but not daring to touch her.

"If you have proper form," his eyes sparkled with an all too familiar amusement "Then you will be able to accurately guide the arrow to its destination. All the force in the universe would never be able to do that."

He took away his hand and met her gaze.

"The target," he gestured to her target pillar "is right there. It won't go anywhere."

And, with his gaze on her, he fired his arrow and the golden bean hit dead center into her pillar.

"Try closing your eyes." He said whimsically "They might do more harm than good in this situation."

He let another one free and it sunk deep into the center of the pillar besides her target.

Yet another on the pillar beside that and he hadn't even needed to glance to make sure.

Now he seemed to be having fun and Lenalee could not help but crack a helpless grin.

He made what had been a tortuous chore for Lenalee look the easiest thing in the world and it made her feel silly and yet a little cheerful.

"You see?" The Jabberwock sung with every arrow "It really doesn't matter what your eyes see-!"

And everyone's blood ran cold at the sound of a terrified yelp.

Mana's eyes grew wide as dinner plates but Lenalee could nothing but laugh because she had received the perfect and priceless view of the white rabbit, Wisely walking through the gates of her garden just to narrowly dodge an arrow to the chest.

Mana jerked his pale faced head around to see the garden gates and the disgruntled youth beside them.

"Ah!" he cried as he began to approach Wisely "I'm so sorry!"

"Bloody hell!" Wisely said with a monotone voice and a puppy like face of pure exasperation "That's what the hatter would have said anyways…"

Being that he was a member of the Royal guard and a dark meister worthy of being there, there was no question about whether or not he'd be more than alright if he received a light arrow to the chest.

There was no reason to imagine stakes that weren't there but Mana was probably more concerned with what the Rabbit would tell the Hatter regarding the incident.

For someone who was perfectly alright with standing up to Cyril, Mana sure did care what he thought.

Perhaps it was some sort of compromise she didn't know about, Lenalee thought and was content with the conclusion.

"And how exactly did you get in here, Wisely?" Declared a now composed Lenalee, putting a hard emphasis on the 'you'.

He was silent for a moment before he motioned towards the gardens and replied in a more than chipper tone "The gate was open."

Lenalee shot a look towards the gate to confirm his words and then shot another sharp look towards the Jabberwock who was still confirming that the youth was in good health.

"Why didn't you close the gate?"

He shuttered under her accusatory gaze but did not meet it "I did not have a key."

With a small laugh, she turned to Wisely again "So, do you too have some amazing life lessons you wandered in here to teach me?"

Now it was Wisely's turn to shutter.

"No. I'm not weird." He said before turning to Mana unapologetically "No offense, by the way."

By the Jabberwocks expression, one could tell he was spared no offense at all. One would think crossed arms and a slight pout would look unusual on an adult like him but somehow, it didn't.

"Now now,The pot should not call the kettle black."

By the White Rabbits expression, one could tell that he was spared all offense and was merely amused by Mana's distress at being called weird twice today.

The young lady gripped the wheels of her chair and, to the best of her ability, pushed her way down the steps of the gazebo, recognizing that practice was over and that it was time to begin other things.

When she left the gazebo, it soon hit her that being in this extreme heat felt very similar to drowning and as she soon as she entered, she immediately wanted relief.

"But I'm sure that your true reason for being here," Lenalee stated as she looked to the White rabbit, making her way to her bronze gate, silver key in hand "Is because of some business with the Jabberwock?"

He smiled and gave a quite overdue bow.

"Indeed, your grace." Were his words "But rather it is your brother who wishes to discuss important matters with him."

She raised an eyebrow as did the Jabberwock in question.

"What sort of business?" She asked and if she hadn't known better she would have made the accusation that every smile the boy offered was entirely fake.

"Nothing too big." Was his reply as he glanced to Mana "Come on, sir."

Now Wisely thought he knew the sir he addressed to be respectful enough to come and go when asked to but he was surprised to see that rather than being acknowledged, he was entirely ignored because Mana saw something lying upon Lenalee's lap for safe keeping as far more important.

Upon leaving her garden, Lenalee was going to return her bow, drawing coal and sketchbook to her room but as soon as she pulled the bronze gate open to take her leave, she saw one of her little drawings get taken from her lap.

She turned her head and reached out to snatch it back on reflex only to find that it was taken so rudely by Mana who stares deeply at it, like it had wronged him somehow.

"What are you doing?" She honestly had no idea why he would take it, anyway being that the drawing was not very well done.

Certainly not as well done as any of Gainese's pieces, she thought bitterly.

"Come on, give it back." She insisted.

"Give her back her picture. We have to go now." Wisely said only to be ignored again.

"This woman…"Mana replied as he gripped the picture just a little less tightly "Where did you see her?"

"I've never seen her! It's just a dream I keep having…" Lenalee reached for it again only to be triumphant.

With the silky parchment in her grasp, she pulled it back to her chest.

The man looked at her for a moment, suddenly feeling very guilty for his childish behavior.

"I'm sorry." He breathed as he cracked an empty smile.

It was around now that Wisely had gotten impatient, declared something about locking him out in the heat as he walked through the gate and began to leave.

Mana noticed this but before he left, he told Lenalee these last words all the while ringing out his hands, refusing to look her in the eye.

"She…" He said quickly as he pointed to his forehead "She had a mole there and she could never keep her hair that perfect."

"What are you talking about?"

And without an explanation, the unusual Jabberwock fled out the bronze gates and ran after the white haired boy who had left him alone.

Lenalee, though thankful for the help with her hobby as no one else had offered any, was more than a little surprised.

As she scanned her sketch once to see what sort of error she had made, she realized that Mana may have been correct.

The woman really did have a mole on her forehead but Lenalee could never see it very well because of the loose strands of hair that fell over her face.

How could she have forgotten after seeing the woman in her dreams nearly every night for the last six months?

Now the Lady of Wonderland Lenalee only had one question in mind.

Just how on earth could the Jabberwock, Mana ever have known what the woman in her dreams looked like?

Evening hand come.

Grime and filth was washed away in the bath and all was rendered brand new but a day of hardship would bring it all back around.

There are many who fall prey to judging the worth of a soul by its usefulness in the world but when all is meaningless and all is folly, this scale of judgment is a broken tool.

But it was plain to so that only time would tell.

Just as the brush strokes of the artist told a story and the words of a writer told an image, time would tell what was in store for all.


End file.
